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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Cliap.Sii!)i1Copjrig]it No 

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



Down North and Up Along 



Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive 
in 2010 with funding from 
Tine Library of Congress 



littp://www.arcliive.org/details/downnortliupalongOOmorl 




Waitinc; for the Tide 



Down North and 
Up Along 



By 



■/ 



Margaret Warner Morley 

Author of «< The Honey-makers," '< The Bee People," 



With Illustrations 



t 



New York 

Dodd, Mead and Company 

1900 



\ 



'TWO COPIES RECEIVED, 

Lfjrary of C(sng'{>««% 
Officii of th« 

P"^ ' 1 1900 

H9gl9Ue of Copyrlghtih 






Copyright, igoo 
By Dodd, Mead and Company 



SECOND COPY, 



UNIVERSITY PRESS • JOHN WILSON 
AND SON • CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. 






CONTENTS 

Page 

I. DiGBY I 

II. Cannon Field l6 

III. Acadia 36 

IV. Acadia's Crops 49 

V. Grand Pre 57 

VI. Evangeline 69 

VII, The Acadians 80 

VIII. Blomidon 94 

IX. Partridge Island iio 

X. Halifax 130 

XI. Toward Cape Breton 146 

XII. Baddeck 158 

XIII. Englishtown 173 

XIV. French River 193 

XV. Cape Smoky 214 

XVI. Ingonish 235 

XVII. The Half Way House 254 

XVIII. AspY Bay 273 

XIX. Cape North 287 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Waiting for the Tide Frontispiece 

Facing Page 

DiGBY 4 '^ 

Sounds drying "4 

Ox WITH Head Yoke 28 -^ 

At THE End of the Day 60 ^ 

A Leafy Tent of the Micmacs 88 

Spinning ^54'' 

Cape Smoky, Cape Breton 184 ^ 

Drying Cod 208 ^ 

Splitting Tables 210 

Early Morning on the Coast 224 

Washing Potatoes 230 ^ 

Catching Trout for Dinner 244 -^ 

Cooking Trout 262 

Clybourn's Brook 278 

A Fishing Schooner 296 ' 

The illustrations in this book are from photographs by Amelia M. fVatson, 
Edith S. IFatson, and Frank G. Warner. 



MAPS 

Facing Page 

Nova Scotia 8 

CoRNWALLis Valley 38 

Cape Breton Island 158 -^ 



Down North and Up Along 

I 

DIGBY 

THE St. John River runs uphill. Not 
through its whole course, and not 
all the time. Still, it runs uphill, as 
one can readily see by standing at 
high tide on the bridge that crosses its mouth 
at the town of St. John, and watching the 
water rush like a mill-race up from the Bay of 
Fundy into the land, where it pours over rocks 
in cascades that fall the wrong way. 

Aside from this eccentricity, the St. John is 
an orderly and very beautiful stream, winding 
in its course and bordered by lovely headlands. 
From St. John, New Brunswick, to Digby, 
Nova Scotia, is a three or five hours' sail, ac- 
cording to the condition of the " St. Rupert's " 
steam cylinders, that humorous vessel having a 
way of blowing one or more of them out just 
before the hour of starting. 

The way from St. John to Digby lies across 
the Bay of Fundy. What better port of entry 
to a new country could be desired than the 



Down North and Up Along 

sounding Bay of Fundy, with the high tides 
of one's childhood's geography still beating on 
its shores ? 

And then the thrill of mingled indignation 
and satisfaction with which one suddenly dis- 
covers the English flag over one's head instead 
of the stars and stripes ! Indignation thus to be 
sailing under a foreign flag in one's own coun- 
try, as it were, but satisfaction to have reached 
foreign soil with so little efiTort. One always 
observes with regret that the English flag is 
far more beautiful than the stars and stripes, — 
for no amount of loyalty can blend a stripe 
of red and then of white into a harmony truly 
grateful to the eye. 

The Bay of Fundy cannot be described as 
an exciting spectacle on that calm August day 
when first we saw it. Indeed, it very much 
resembled any other expanse of water, and if its 
tides are beyond all reason we did not perceive 
it then. 

We came sailing through the Digby Gut at 
sunset, the clear waters of Fundy behind us, the 
Annapolis Basin opening dream-like in front, 
while to the right the bold front of Beaman's 
Mountain, and to the left the abrupt termina- 

2 



Digh 

tion of North Mountain, narrowed the Gut to 
its present mile-wide channel, holding it in 
sure rocky bonds that no monster tides nor 
winter storms could unloose. 

If the gods are propitious, when the traveller 
sails through Digby Gut he will have a clear 
sky under which the Annapolis Basin will lie 
blue, and in the distance misty, defined by the 
pleasing outlines of its purple-blue hills. On 
the right Digby will lie, so dream-like and 
lovely that one fears to draw near, lest it 
vanish and a commonplace village take its 
place. 

If the gods are wholly inclined to favour the 
traveller, he will approach Digby, not only at 
sunset, on a clear day, but at low tide as well. 
Then the village that in the distance was a 
vision of wonderful blues and purples will not 
grow commonplace as he comes near, for he 
will forget all about it. 

By the time he is close enough to discover 
its unpoetical and actual state his attention will 
be centred upon the wharf that towers high 
above the smoke-stack of the steamer as it 
comes alongside it. Far above the passengers' 
heads a heavy wall of planks is hung with wet 

3 



Down North and Up Along 

seaweeds and painted deep browns and greens 
by the ocean, while clusters of barnacles add 
their gray and white to the strange decorations. 
There is a strong salt smell in the air, that 
fragrance of seaweed that always brings loving 
memories of landing on distant shores. 

The " St. Rupert " did not seem so small a 
saint until we came under this giant sea-tapes- 
tried wharf and saw the people above leaning 
over and peering down into the depths where we 
wallowed in the sea. And we saw no method 
short of flight which could raise us to their 
level. 

I expected M., my artist friend, who is timid 
in the face of high places, to look worried over 
the situation ; but no, she was as serene as a 
May morning. The wharf was picturesque, 
hence so commonplace an emotion as fear was 
no luxury here, and she left the responsibility 
of landing to the English government while 
she enjoyed the novel scene to the utmost. 

High wharves have their own secrets, we 
were to learn, as the boat with much puffing 
and snorting and rope-pulling finally swung 
about and we discovered ourselves close to a 
landing within the pier. Beneath one side of 

4 



Digby 

it a wedge had been cut out, the narrow end 
on shore, and the wide one out in the water 
under the wharf. The opening thus formed 
was heavily planked within, and we crossed the 
gangway into a cavern slimy and strange. 

The floor upon which we stepped was damp, 
barnacles encrusted the beams at the sides and 
overhead, while green, brown, and yellow sea- 
weeds hung on the walls, and a large starfish 
with his arms wrapped about a stone appeared 
to be gazing knowingly at us out of one round 
Cyclopean eye, which, alas ! was no eye at all, 
and we knew that in spite of his wise look he 
was as blind as a mole. 

There was a strong clean odour of the sea in 
this strange cavern, and we heard some one 
near say that at high tide the place upon which 
we stood would be thirty feet under water. So 
this giant wharf was a tribute to the tides of 
Fundy ! 

We had a sudden wish to get out ; we im- 
agined the tide coming in — swiftly, surely ; 
concealing the existence of this hole in the side 
of the pier ; the surface of the water sparkling 
in the sunlight twenty feet higher than the 
roof of the dark cavern. 

5 



Down North and Up Along 

Strong horses, drawing low-swung trucks, 
came tramping down the incline. There was a 
crowd of people making their way toward the 
oblong space of light at the top. We joined 
the throng, and as we reached the top turned 
and looked back. 

Above us were great jointed timbers form- 
ing a rude arch ; within was the half-lighted 
cavern with its sea-painted walls. It was a 
strange sight and one that often afterward 
drew us to the wharf when the tide was low at 
the hour of landing. Up out of the sea-cavern 
poured a stream of people ; dim in the back- 
ground was a pool of water where the blind 
starfish clasped its stone and waited for the 
incoming tide. 

The people seemed to be coming up out of 
this water, and they should have been stream- 
ing with seaweed and clad in scales. 

We were not disappointed in Digby. It is 
not the dream city that we saw from the boat, 
but it is good. Its houses are commonplace 
and uninteresting. Still, we found it good to 
be in Digby. Its location, the buildings stand- 
ing on one long street under a hillside, reminds 
one of Provincetown, but the sand-hills of that 

6 



Digby 

fishy place of delight are lacking here ; this hill- 
side is sodded with the most brilliant green, 
and groups of trees grow upon it. 

At present Hfe is simple in Digby. The 
"Americans," as they call us of the United 
States, have not yet invaded it enough to spoil 
its simplicity. But it is only a question of 
time when fair Digby will belong to the 
summer tourist. Now it is in possession of 
the codfish. Everywhere through the vil- 
lage, which straggles in a way to make com- 
pensation in part for its crimes in architecture, 
are to be seen rows upon rows of "flakes," 
covered in fair weather with the triumphant 
form of the cod, with reinforcements of the 
less-esteemed haddock, hake, and pollock. 

The codfish flakes are the same here as on 
Cape Cod, the same gray skeletons built of 
slats laid across long side-pieces, like wide, 
close-runged ladders placed parallel to the earth 
and supported two feet or so above it. 

One likes codfish flakes, just as one does 
old houses and old-fashioned posy-beds. They 
give character to a place, and they always select 
the most picturesque corners and fields in which 
to exhibit themselves. They cling to the 

7 



Down North and Up Along 

shores, pre-empt all unoccupied places about 
the wharves, and cluster about the cottages 
of the poor. They are seldom level, but 
pursue a wavy, uncertain course, as though, 
gray and decrepit, they were about to give 
up mortal strife and settle in peace to the 
earth beneath. And then the odour of them ! 
Anyone who does not love the faint fragrance 
that clings to the gray old flakes has no kin- 
ship with the ocean. 

During the summer months upon the flakes 
lies the wealth of Digby. Here the codfish is 
spread out to dry. The time of greatest 
ignominy as well as of greatest picturesqueness 
for a codfish is during its season of drying 
upon the flakes. It may then be sat upon 
or stood upon and otherwise misused. It 
loses its identity completely, and nobody feels 
the slightest obligation to show it respect. It 
has lost its fishly and elegant proportions ; 
it is flat, shrunken, saturated with salt, and 
lies, acres of it, spread out on its flakes to 
render to the strong sea-breezes and the heat 
of the sun the last remnant of water in its 
withered form. It gives a quaint colouring to 
the landscape and fills the air with its own 




o 



Digby 

inimitable fragrance, — the fragrance that lin- 
gers about the flakes when its form is no longer 
there. It sends forth a clean appetising odour 
very different from the fishy incense that per- 
vades Provincetown, that mingled odour of 
fresh, stale, and salt fish with a flavouring of tar 
and bilge-water, the memory of which pursues 
the stranger, but does not fill him with emo- 
tions of delight. 

The memory of the fragrant Digby fish- 
flakes is a pleasure. Digby is so exquisitely 
clean, the air from Fundy is so abundant and 
clear, that the only rivals to the odour of the 
drying cod are the salt smell of the seaweeds 
at low tide and the fragrance from the sur- 
rounding flower-gardens. 

Whether the sailor men like it or not, they 
are obliged to keep ship and wharf clean when 
in Digby. The law gives them a sharp prod 
in the form of a fine if they grow negligent. 

The great winds are a wholesome purifier of 
both ship and town, but even so, the cleanliness 
of the fishing-schooners as they come in loaded 
is something of a surprise. It is something 
of a surprise too to see the cod put through 
his phases, from the shining fish that comes 

9 



Down North and Up Along 

in on the schooners to the dull triangular 
form that appears on the flakes. 

One thinks of the pitchfork as an implement 
of the farm ; it bears upon its prongs sugges- 
tions of new-mown hay and golden straw, but 
here at Digby its real meaning is apparent. It 
is Neptune's trident with one of the prongs 
lost in the vortex of time. It is used, of course, 
in its proper field, — to pitch codfish. Out of 
the ship's hold the shining forms are tossed as 
a farmer's boy tosses a sheaf of grain. 

They have already, while on shipboard, 
gone through their first sad experiences, and 
now, headless, heartless, and saturated with 
salt, though still with shining skins, they are 
pitchforked from the hold to the deck. 
Another trident-bearer then pitchforks them to 
the wharf Here they are pitchforked to the 
wooden cradle in which they are weighed. 
From the cradle they are once more pitchforked 
into a great quivering heap on the wharf. 
Thence they are pitchforked into wheelbarrows 
and wheeled to the store-room, where they are 
pitchforked into vats and resalted. 

As the cod receives his last pitchforking you 
examine him, expecting to find him riddled 



Dighy 

with holes and as ragged as Rip Van Winkle's 
old coat at the end of his twenty years' sleep 
on the mountain. But here is matter for reflec- 
tion. Try your best you cannot find a hole 
in him. He bears a charmed anatomy. He 
must certainly have been constructed with 
special reference to being pitchforked. 

There is a fiction about his getting a scrub- 
bing when he reaches land. This is a treatment 
which, to the observer, he appears to need 
several times before he is finally considered 
" cured." But he gets it only once, one scrub- 
bing, like a plenary indulgence, evidently being 
thought sufficient to wipe away future as well as 
present stains. There are reasons for conjec- 
turing that the scrubbing is sometimes omitted 
altogether, and that he is introduced to his flakes 
with the manifold marks of his captivity upon 
him. 

He rests awhile in the vats of salt into which 
he was finally pitchforked, then Is taken out 
and " press-piled " for a few days. This is not 
as bad as being pitchforked. It is merely 
being piled up, tail in and shoulders out, into 
a round mound by the fish-flakes. These 
mounds of penitent cod are a part of the 



Down North and Up Along 

picturesqueness of the actual life of the flakes. 
There is now no more pitchforking ; that ordeal 
at least is over. 

The fish are spread upon the flakes by hand, 
and the operator becomes very expert in shying 
a dried cod into exactly the right spot. An 
expert will shy cod half the length of a long 
flake and never make a miss. 

Here they lie in the sun to be blown upon 
by the kindly winds, and if these winds prove 
unkindly and blow upon the patient cod dust 
from the road and soot from the chimneys, that 
is but a slight vicissitude in the life of a dried 
codfish which nobody minds. 

When night comes the cod are gathered up 
into piles on the flakes and covered over. In 
the morning they are spread out again. This 
is repeated every fair day until they are dry 
enough, when they are put into the picturesque 
press-piles again to await transportation to 
distant markets. Such is the history attached 
to the fragrant flakes, and such is the occupation 
of Digby. 

Nothing looks less likely to produce a large 
income than a pile of dried codfish, perhaps 
with an old coat hung over it, that being the 

12 



Digby 

handiest way of disposing of the garment until 
needed. Yet these thin, gray, misshapen 
spectres have an incredible amount of good meat 
packed under their shrivelled skins, and they 
bring in many thousands of dollars to the 
industrious fisher-folk. 

Nor, while we are upon the subject, is dried 
fish the sailor's only revenue from the prodigal 
cod. Upon the decks of the ships are great 
odorous vats full of livers from which the sun's 
rays are economically extracting the oil. 

Fish oil once encountered is very lasting, and 
is not readily forgotten — or forgiven. The 
cod-liver oil of the apothecary is a fragrant 
delicacy compared to the contents of the vats 
as they come frothing in from the fishing 
grounds. 

Then there are the "sounds," as the sailors 
call the swim-bladders. They too are saved, 
and having been dried in the sun go to the 
manufacturer to come forth as gelatin, or 
perchance as glue. " Fried fresh sounds and 
cods' tongues " form a delicacy highly prized 
by the fisher-folk and not to be scorned by the 
discriminating stranger. 

The sounds are sent to the United States^ 
13 



Down North and Up Along 

mostly to Boston, and the oil too is sent to the 
United States, to heal her consumptives and 
grease her machinery, but the cod himself takes 
his last sea-voyage from Digby to the West 
Indies. 

The West Indians must have an unappeas- 
able appetite for dried codfish, judging from 
the quantities reputed to be sent there. Every 
week-day Digby prepares codfish for the West 
Indians, but not on Sunday. Those who think 
it a sin for cod to dry on Sunday have raised 
a bulwark about weak humanity that might be 
tempted, by imposing a fine upon the public 
appearance of the cod on the Lord's day. 

This information was given M. by an owner 
of cod-flakes who was out one Sunday morning 
in quest of his cow. The good man was in his 
work-a-day clothes, which made him feel 
ashamed. He apologised for not being dressed 
up as became a respectable man on Sunday, 
saying he did not expect to meet with ladies. 

This little incident well illustrates the con- 
dition of the people here, and the feeling of 
self-respect that seems to animate every one. 

While the cod may not appear upon Sunday 
without causing disgrace to his owner, still, 

14 




Sounds Drying 



J^igh 

there are exceptions to all rules, M.'s apolo- 
getic Sabbath-breaker owned, and she there- 
upon learned that the limit of Digby's piety is 
the condition of her codfish, for if there should 
be a week of bad weather, and the fish in 
danger of spoiling, they may sun themselves of 
a Sunday without injury to the souls of their 
owners. 

M.'s informant was himself a member of the 
Church of England, because, as he explained, 
the " English " were not as strict as the Bap- 
tists and Methodists. He did not think it was 
wicked to sketch on Sunday, a statement which 
comforted M. greatly, as she was engaged at 
the time in that sinful Sunday occupation. 



IS 



II 

CANNON FIELD 

IN Digby the temptation to sketch is con- 
stant, M. says. One wants to be at it all 
the time. There are a few, a very few 
picturesque houses, but it is the coast it- 
self, the queer high wharves, the fish-flakes, the 
storehouses, the old apple-trees on Cannon 
Field, and the numberless views on every 
hand outside the village that appeal to one 
most. 

Cannon Field is a place easy to be discovered 
without help, but it does not detract from its 
merits to have it enthusiastically pointed out 
by a small boy whose peculiar anatomy is ex- 
plained when he proceeds to unload from 
blouse and pockets several quarts of live snails 
which he deposits at your feet that he may the 
better instruct you upon the topography of 
Digby and criticise your sketch of a neighbour- 
ing wharf. The small boy is always present 
when one sits down to paint, and often he is 
not unwelcome, particularly if he informs his 
hearers, as this one did, with a pride quite justi- 

i6 



Cannon Field 



fiable, if the statement were correct, that his 
father owned the Baptist Church of Boston. 

Cannon Field is to the right upon coming 
up from the wharf. It is at the top of a bluff 
whose base is washed by the sea at high tide. 
It is but an open grassy field, containing a 
group of large willows, a few gnarled old apple 
and cherry trees, half-a-dozen defunct cannon 
with their noses in the ground, and two living 
ones with their noses suspiciously sniffing the 
air of the quiet Basin. 

But there is a charm about it that makes one 
go again and again, go and lie on the grass in 
the warmth of the sun or the shade of the wil- 
lows, and look off over the beautiful Annapolis 
Basin with its one narrow, high-walled entrance 
at Digby Gut. 

Perhaps, as you lie thus, the scattered fisher- 
men's houses on the other shore fade from 
sight and the vessels in the Basin melt away, 
leaving rock and water and dark evergreen 
forest in possession. Then, perhaps, two small 
ships, which are not fishing schooners nor any 
craft that sail these waters to-day, come sailing 
through the Digby Gut. The men on their 
decks are wary and eager. Where Digby lies 
2 17 



Down North and Up Along 

they see no town, only the scarred rock that 
holds back the mighty tides, the long grass- 
grown terrace where a town will one day lie, — 
a town of aliens, — the hill behind grown thick 
with firs ; these are all that greet their eager 
eyes, and their two little ships sail on into the 
lovely land-locked Basin. 

You know them well. They are the French, 
who scarcely three hundred years ago ventured 
across the broad Atlantic in those little ships 
of theirs. Through Digby Gut they came one 
fair spring morning, the first white men whose 
eyes had rested on those shores. In they 
came, the advance guard of civilisation to a 
new piece of the world. 

The little ships sail up the Basin and out of 
sight behind a wooded island. 

So much for the dream on Cannon Field. 
You rub your eyes and look about you. The 
Basin is dotted over with boats ; the town of 
Digby lies on the slopes behind you. British 
guns point down the Basin in the direction the 
two little ships have gone. But they are safe. 
They sailed behind that island almost three 
hundred years ago. The British guns cannot 
touch them nor can aught destroy them : they 



Cannon Field 



are immortal, preserved in the history of three 
great nations. 

Perhaps the tall old apple-trees on Cannon 
Field were placed there long ago by French 
hands. They are very un-American apple- 
trees indeed, and one is inclined to question 
their title to be called apple-trees at all, until 
among their scattered leaves are discovered 
unequivocal if not tempting apples. 

At the foot of the bluff is the deep sea basin 
where the water rises and falls from twenty- 
eight to thirty feet, twice each day. But one 
does not realise the magnitude of the tides at 
this point. One does not realise it at all at 
first. The flowing of the tide is fast but 
gradual : the mighty basin fills, fills, until the 
tall pier is an ordinary wharf, with no hint of 
a hole in its side, and a broad sheet of water 
smiles and sparkles in the sun. 

Through the Gut the tides come racing with 
frightful velocity, making the smaller boats 
watchful about entering, but once inside, the 
waters spread without much commotion and 
fill the great Basin to its brim. 

Swiftly but gradually the waters subside, the 
pier grows tall, long points of shining gravel 

19 



Down North and Up Along 

reach out into the water. With its seaweed- 
painted rocks, its purple shining sands, its 
bared weirs, the coast is much more pictur- 
esque, though less impressive, at low tide. 

Cannon Field is a place to dream in. Ro- 
mance and history have woven their bright 
fabrics before its very eyes. A remnant of 
those Indians who fill our histories in that 
confusing chapter known as the French and 
Indian Wars have their tents to the right as 
one faces the village, at the end of a little 
green lane that borders on Cannon Field. 
They are not there for scalps this bright sum- 
mer day, but for bits of the white man's magic 
silver, which they hope to get in exchange for 
the baskets and moccasins they have woven 
and worked upon through the long winter. 

There is a pappoose in one of the tents 
which the "American " ladies, with a unanim- 
ity in humour which one hopes is not national, 
all inquire the price of. 

Digby houses are as ugly as two-story 
wooden cottages, with narrow facades and 
steep roofs, must be, and they also possess 
the inartistic virtues of cleanliness and new 
paint. Few Digby houses go to ruin for lack 



Cannon Field 



of paint ; consequently the town has a very new 
look, and presents a thrifty and well-to-do ap- 
pearance as exasperating to the artist as it is 
doubtless gratifying to the inhabitant. But 
these objectionable dwellings are in part re- 
deemed by their flower-gardens. 

Fish-flakes and flowers can do much for a 
place, be it never so ugly, and in Digby there 
are flowers everyv/here. The people have a 
pretty way of putting them wherever there is 
a place to hold them. One sees pots of 
blooming plants in the cellar windows on the 
main street, where the houses add to their 
other crimes .against good taste that of open- 
ing directly upon the sidewalk. Flower-pots 
stand on brackets on the side of the house and 
often bank up two sides of the little extended 
entry-way. 

It is pleasant to enter a house between walls 
of flowers, and it is pleasant to stop before the 
yards and interview the tangles of poppies and 
pinks and all sorts of bright and spicy flower- 
folk that do congregate in those places. 

Digby flowers appear to grow for the mere 
joy of it, they are so bright and spicy, and 
crowd out the weeds with such vigour, some- 

21 



Down North and Up Along 

times overflowing the garden and straggling 
out to the roadside. They remind one of 
Celia Thaxter's flowers at the light-house on 
the Isles of Shoals, seeming to have the same 
qualities of brilliancy and fragrance. 

A house without flowers is the rare excep- 
tion in Digby. They give character to the 
place and rob the cheap frame buildings of 
half their ugliness, and occasionally they make 
one charming. There is a delightful old gar- 
den almost surrounding a tiny house, facing 
Cannon Field. The house itself is covered 
with vines which are vastly more becoming 
than paint, and into the garden seem to have 
come all the sweet old-fashioned posies from 
long ago to now. 

It is a pleasure to saunter over from Can- 
non Field and lean on the low fence, behind 
which is such profusion of bloom. The back 
yard, too, is a flower-garden, sharing the pre- 
cious soil with the plum-trees and gooseberry 
bushes. 

If fruits and vegetables were to flourish in 
Digby soil as the flowers do, the cod would 
have a formidable rival, but the stern earth 
yields its juices freely to only the coaxing root- 

22 



Cannon Field 



lets of its favourites, the flowers, and the people 
have to send elsewhere for their cabbages. 
We thank the earth for this : fish-flakes and 
flowers belong to Digby ; cabbages belong 
to anybody. 

Digby has cherries, however. The place is 
full of gnarled old trees, and there are orchards 
of them in the country round about. 

If Digby had picturesque houses, it would be 
almost too charming a spot for the visitor. It 
has two or three. They are to be found 
on the Racquet, an inlet running in along one 
side of the town. They are little gray, wide- 
roofed, old fisherman's houses, guiltless of paint 
and very much the worse for wear. Digby no 
doubt is ashamed of them, and they must be 
very uncomfortable to live in, but with their 
tall hollyhocks, their clustering fish-flakes, the 
background of water, and the distant mountain- 
top, they make distracting pictures. 

Behind them are the wharves where the fish- 
ing-schooners come in to leave their burdens 
of cod. The ships sail up the Racquet in gal- 
lant style. It is a pretty sheet of water, with 
its curving shore-line and its background of 
Beaman's Mountain ; and one never would sus- 

23 



Down North and Up Along 

pect, after watching the laden vessels enter, 
that the haven they have sought is there for 
but a few hours at a time, by the grace of 
Neptune. 

The Racquet, like many another bay along 
this coast, is a gift of the giant tides of Fundy. 
When the tide goes out, the ships lie on their 
keels in the gravel, and the hard bed of the 
Racquet becomes an excellent roadway for teams 
that wish to reach the other shore. 

In the morning one may cross the Racquet 
dry-shod ; in the afternoon laden vessels will 
sail over his footprints. 

There are no weirs in the Racquet ; but if 
one desire those fantastic forms, let him walk 
to the farther end of the town through its one 
long street, and there he will come upon the 
broad and winding Joggin. It is another tidal 
basin, but the receding waters do not lay it 
bare. Into it the fish come in shoals with the 
coming of the water, but at the going out of 
the water they remain, for the weirs have their 
long arms about them. 

These weirs are distinguished among their 
kind by their simplicity. The fisherman does 
not lavish costly nets upon them, as is the case 

24 



Cannon Field 



along the New England shore. He simply 
drives poles close together into the mud at low 
tide, about them weaves the pliant branches of 
trees in and out into a rude network, and to 
the top of the poles ties brushwood to mark 
the place of the weirs at high tide. 

These primitive fish-snares seem to have no 
definite form, but straggle about here, there, and 
everywhere ; and the Joggin, with its purple 
sands and grassy banks and its weirs trailing 
reflections in the water, is a place one loves to 
recall. 

It is a gratification to be able to chronicle 
the fact that in addition to her other virtues 
simple Digby is still in the ox-cart period. 
And this, despite the " Flying Bluenose " that 
daily goes shrieking over the rails that have 
been laid in her streets. It is oxen that unload 
the vessels and do the hard work on the roads, 
and oxen that bring the country people to 
town. 

Oxen exhale a pastoral something that affects 
all their neighbourhood. Go gee-hawing 
down Broadway with a yoke of oxen attached 
to a broad-tired cart, and New York herself 
would remember the days of her childhood, 

25 



Down North and Up Along 

when Canal Street deserved its name even 
more than at present, when the buxom milk- 
maid filled her foaming pail in the Bowery. 
Digby is a clean, wind-blown, beflowered, and 
beflaked little fishing village, but when along 
her streets the ox-carts go rumbling and sham- 
bling, she becomes something more : she has a 
part in the fields and the grassy lanes as well 
as in the salt sea. 

Digby oxen have none of the coyness and 
head-turnings common to their " American " 
kindred. They are apparently as unconcerned 
and stolid at the approach of a stranger as was 
the blind starfish in the cavern under the wharf 
They turn their heads neither to the right nor 
to the left when in the yoke, but face front as 
unswervingly as if on military parade. Their 
eyes, which roll in the direction of the one 
approaching, alone betray the curiosity natural 
to their race. They have an un-oxlike dig- 
nity and precision of movement, which is 
rather impressive, and which is not wholly 
owing to the superior character of Nova Scotia 
cattle, for their ingenious masters have placed 
the yoke upon their heads instead of about 
their necks. 

26 



Cannon Field 



A broad bar of wood lies across the necks 
just behind the horns about which it fits closely. 
It is held in place by strong leather straps bound 
tightly across the foreheads just below the 
horns. When oxen are thus yoked, their 
heads are almost as immovable as if held in 
a vise. The tongue of the cart, which is at- 
tached to the bar between the oxen, is held 
very high, on a level with or even higher than 
the eyes. It is amusing to see this head-gear 
adjusted. In order sufficiently to tighten the 
straps, the man must have some point of re- 
sistance, and this he finds in the face of the ox 
himself. He braces his knee against the broad 
and kindly front of his comrade and lies back 
on the strap with all his weight. The ox blinks 
calmly on and says not a word. In spite of 
his queer head-gear the Nova Scotia ox an- 
swers to the same lingo as does his " Ameri- 
can " brother, and the familiar " gee, haw, 
back, g' long," may be heard mingling with 
the tinkle of his bell any hour of the day in 
Digby. 

For each ox has his bell. It is an agreeable 
bell with a pleasant tinkle-tankle, and rather 
an expensive luxury, a pair of bells and their 

27 



Down North and Up Along 

straps costing three dollars and a half, so the 
owner of an ox told us. 

The Digby ox has not quite " bells on his 
fingers and rings on his toes, by which he 
makes music wherever he goes," as was the 
case with the young person in the nursery 
rhyme, but he has a bell on his neck and a 
little metal shoe on each of his toes, by which 
he makes as good music wandering about the 
stony byways in his hours of freedom as one 
frequently hears from more elaborate instru- 
ments. At least, it is never out of time or out 
of tune. 

One need not fear meeting our friend, for he 
is the gentlest ox in the world ; much hand- 
ling has made him that. He has lost the tra- 
dition of horns as weapons, and looks upon 
them only as a convenience for moving heavy 
loads for other people. 

Besides the ox-teams there are the horses 
drawing their low-swung trucks. If the Nova 
Scotian has invented his head yoke, he has cer- 
tainly borrowed his truck from his brother the 
" American," or is it vice versa ? for it is the 
same convenient means of transportation the 
Cape Cod man employs. The bottom of 

28 




Ox WITH Head Yoke 



Cannon Field 



the cart is so swung from the hubs that it is 
only four or five inches from the ground, sav- 
ing a great deal of strength, one should think, 
in loading and unloading. One wonders why 
the Yankee has not made more use of this 
idea, and why one does not see it in the flat 
prairie towns of the West. 

What is the law that decrees certain imple- 
ments and customs to be retained within cer- 
tain limits ? Why does the farmer in one 
Rhode Island county rake his hay as his fore- 
fathers were wont, and in three adjoining ones 
gather it speedily by means of a long rope ? 
Why does the low-swung truck, local to Cape 
Cod, crop out again in Nova Scotia ? 

There is a tremendous vis inertia in human 
affairs that preserves the individuality of places 
in spite of the levelling power of the " new 
civilisation." Blessings on it ! Long may 
it preserve Digby's dusty fish-flakes and her 
mihtary oxen with their tinkling bells ! 

It would not do to leave Digby without 
making the acquaintance of the famous " Digby 
chickens." These are not feathered bipeds, but 
good red herrings. They are large and oily, 
and their smoked skins are a beautiful golden 

29 



Down North and Up Along 

bronze, played over by bright, iridescent hues. 
To give an idea of these when properly " kip- 
pered " would excite useless envy in the hearts 
of all who grasped the idea. These favoured 
fish are called " Digby angels " in other towns 
of Nova Scotia, but it is to be feared this is 
due to a spirit of mockery engendered by 
jealousy. 

Reluctantly we prepared to leave Digby, and 
one morning found ourselves on the " Flying 
Bluenose," and speeding along the Annapolis 
Basin in the direction the two little ships had 
sailed so long ago. 

" Bluenose " in Nova Scotia is equivalent to 
" Yankee " in New England. The derivation of 
" Yankee " is uncertain, — nobody knows exactly 
where it came from, nor who invented and first 
applied it ; consequently there is a pleasant mys- 
tery about it which enables us to forget its 
plebeian sound and even to feel proud of any 
claim to the title. 

But there is no reclaiming haze of mystery 
about the meaning of " Bluenose," though the 
Bluenoses themselves are frequently unable, 
or possibly ashamed, to explain it. One old 
woman told us it came from the " Flying 

30 



\ 



Cannon Field 



Bluenose." But her daughter explained, look- 
ing askance at us, as though to make sure we 
were serious in our desire for information, 
" You ought to see us in November ! " 

It seems there is a " Flying Yankee " train 
on the " American " side ; and Nova Scotia, not 
to be outdone by " them Yanks," started the 
" Flying Bluenose " on her side, which was not 
strictly original, though it is considered com- 
mendable, as the " Flying Bluenose " is a very 
good express train, running all the way from 
Yarmouth, on the western point of Nova Scotia, 
to Halifax, a couple of hundred miles away as 
the road runs. 

Next to originality is the power to know a 
good thing when it is seen, and then to imi- 
tate it. 

The " Flying Bluenose " crossed the high 
bridge just out of Digby and bore us toward 
one of the most interesting historic spots in 
North America. 

It is the spot where the two French ships 
came to anchor, bringing the first white settlers 
to a new world. The place is called Annapolis 
now, though at its founding in 1605 it bore 
the name of Port Royal, and is, as every one 

31 



Down North and Up Along 

knows, next to St. Augustine the oldest Euro- 
pean settlement in North America. It seemed 
a pity to go hurrying by it when we saw the 
lovely meadows sloping to the town, their yel- 
lows, greens, browns, and reds mingling in a 
half summer, half autumn mood. 

The grass-grown earthworks were inviting, 
too, and the old gray stone magazine standing 
in the centre gave an air of antiquity to the 
place. The water was out, and the red and 
brown sands on the shores of the Annapolis 
Basin lay exposed, adding their charm of colour 
to the scene. 

But we were to see no more of Annapolis 
than the glimpse from the train. M. was 
afraid to. She wished to preserve the romance 
and mystery with which her imagination had 
enveloped it ; and having recently lost the life- 
long mystery of the Bay of Fundy by too 
great familiarity with that cheery and in no 
way mysterious body of water, she felt that 
she could not afford the risk of depleting 
the storehouse of her imagination any farther 
at present. 

So we went on, imagining Port Royal as it 
was when in possession of the French, smoking 

32 



Cannon Field 



their lobster-claw pipes ; and in spite of their 
precarious tenure of home and life in a country 
of savages, revelling through that winter of 
long ago and instituting the Order of the Good 
Time. They had their fun, but it did not last, 
for enemies in the mother country as well as 
from abroad quickly shifted the actors from one 
scene to another ; and out of the confusion of 
the times there stands clearly but one poetic 
form, that of a woman, Madame La Tour. 
Perhaps she does not belong specially to Port 
Royal, but she does belong to the history of 
that time ; and by her heroic deeds has earned 
a place in the memory of man, — a place which 
will be recognised when her poet arises to sing 
her into fame. She stands waiting, a dim fig- 
ure, for the Longfellow who shall take her by 
the hand and place her glowing in the eyes and 
the hearts of the people. 

The Annapolis River, which enters the head 
of the Basin, owes the greater part of its vol- 
ume to the tide- water. Its channel is deep and 
gullied, as seen at low tide, and its banks are 
composed of sleek, shining mud that, half the 
time uncovered, yet never has time to dry. As 
we follow its course we see the ships lying 
3 ZZ 



Down North and Up Along 

high up on the mud banks, miles from water 
enough to float them. 

One dropping suddenly down upon this 
strange sight might well wonder if the days of 
magic were gone, or if this withdrawal of the 
waters was a freak of some revengeful gnome. 
A few hours, however, redeems the river. In- 
credible as it seems, the water comes hastening 
in, up the long miles, until the deep gullies are 
full rivers and the ships are afloat and able to 
sail wherever they choose. 

As one follows up the Annapolis Valley, 
North Mountain stretches its long low range 
against the sky at the left, while South Moun- 
tain runs parallel to it, but lower and more 
broken, at the right. 

The Annapolis Basin lies long and narrow 
between the two low mountain ranges, and at 
its head receives the Annapolis River, which 
flows through the northern part of the valley, 
its course extending in the same general direc- 
tion as that of the Basin, making the latter 
seem like a sudden expansion of the river. 

As we finally left the river we passed over 
the low water-shed that separates the Annapolis 
from the Cornwallis Valley. The Annapolis 

34 



Cannon Field 



River flows to the southwest, the rivers of 
the Cornwallis Valley to the northeast. 

As we crossed the water-shed we entered a 
new world of history and romance. The con- 
fused events that cluster about Port Royal gave 
way to the simple peace of the Acadians, — that 
sense of peace which even their sad expulsion 
cannot quite drive from our hearts. 

As we crossed that little rise of ground we 
neared the dike-lands of the Acadians and the 
home of Evangeline. 



35 



Ill 

ACADIA 

ACADIA is the original French name 
for Nova Scotia. It is said to come 
from the Indian cadie or kadi, which 
means " abounding in," and is often 
found as an affix in the names of places, as, for 
instance, Shubenacadie, " abounding in ground- 
nuts," and the euphonious and simple Ap- 
chechkumoochwakadi, " abounding in black 
ducks." 

While " Acadia " was in a general way 
applied to the whole of Nova Scotia, to 
most minds it now has a more restricted 
meaning. 

We think of it as that Utopia where Long- 
fellow's Evangeline lived and loved, and whence 
her people were driven forth. It is a land of 
poetry, reclaimed from the sea by the dikes of 
the old Acadian farmers, and by the traveller is 
looked for in what is known as the Cornwallis 
Valley. 

Poetry often vanishes in the presence of the 
reality, and one's first thought upon entering 

36 



Acadia 

the Cornwallis Valley is very likely of the im- 
proved appearance of the apples, for along the 
line of the railroad they are small and unin- 
viting, until the obscure line of water-shed that 
separates the Annapolis and Cornwallis Valleys 
has been crossed, when a notable change for 
the better comes over the orchards. 

It was a pleasant, pastoral land through 
which the " Flying Bluenose " hurried us, but 
for some distance there was nothing remarkable 
about it, for we noticed no dikes until we 
changed cars at Kentville and were bounced 
along the little branch road that leads to Kings- 
port, which is situated on Minas Basin. 

V^e did not go as far as Kingsport at this 
time, however, but stopped a mile short of there 
at Canning, a small village with its one long 
street lined on the river-side by straggling 
shops of a moribund aspect. Large trees and 
ample dooryards give Canning a pleasant and 
home-like look, and at the rear of the shops 
the Habitant River rolls restlessly back and 
forth. 

The Habitant is a tidal stream, all that is 
left of a once mighty flood that brought large 
ships to Canning's wharves. Where once the 

37 



Down North and Up Along 

waters spread are level plains of great fertility, 
for the spade of the dike-maker has been at 
work, and the chastened Habitant is now a 
narrow stream, its winding course bordered by 
a narrow green embankment that in the dis- 
tance looks like a line of raised embroidery 
traversing some gigantic pattern. Beyond the 
Habitant lie the reclaimed meadow-lands now 
dotted with haystacks. 

Beyond the meadows is a lovely stretch of 
highlands, the termination of South Mountain. 
This was our first view of the dike-lands, and 
it took some time to realise the magnitude of 
what has been accomplished. In fact, it cannot 
be understood at this point. 

The Habitant is a deep gully of red and 
shining mud as we saw it at low tide. Two 
or three small sail-boats were lying up high 
and dry on its rim. There was but a thread 
of muddy water stealing seaward, along the 
bottom of the gully, soon to be met and 
turned back by the incoming tide of Minas 
Basin, that twice every day fills the doomed 
Habitant, at its departure leaving another 
layer of the red ooze which is slowly but 
surely obliterating the channel of the river. 
38 




> 



u 



Acadia 

Four miles from Canning, on a commanding 
spur of North Mountain, is an open space 
called Look Off. This is one of the best 
points from which to view the dike-lands, and 
thither we went one fair day. 

North Mountain nowhere attains an alti- 
tude of more than six hundred feet, which 
scarcely entitles it to the name of mountain. 
Yet the view from Look Off is more impres- 
sive than many a scene beheld from a higher 
point. 

North Mountain rises abruptly from the 
plain, so that the wide vista of the Cornwallis 
Valley lay a vast, fair scene before us. We 
looked down upon the far-reaching dike-lands 
of the old Acadian farmers, the scene of the 
tragedy and romance of their lives, the fair 
meadows they had stolen bit by bit from the 
sea an imperishable memorial of their labors. 

Minas Basin, like the beautiful Annapolis 
Basin, is an inlet from the Bay of Fundy. It 
forms the northern boundary to the Cornwallis 
Valley ; and as the tides come in, higher even 
than those in the Annapolis Basin, they flood 
the low lands and race up the river channels 
for many miles. 

39 



Down North and Up Along 

Three tidal rivers traverse the length of the 
Cornwallis Valley, — the Habitant, which was 
the nearest to us, and was seen here and there 
like a ribbon of silver ; the Canard, of which 
we could catch glimpses ; and the Cornwallis, 
farthest away and largest of all, from which 
the whole valley gets its name. 

These rivers empty into a wide bay or lagoon 
that encroaches upon the northern border of 
the Cornwallis Valley. At high tide this bay 
is a sheet of water ; at low tide the red sands 
are bare half-way to Minas, and are interspersed 
with blue pools and interrupted by the shining 
mouths of the three rivers that wind down to 
the sea. 

The channels of the rivers are deep and nar- 
row, and wherever they go through the fertile 
valley the patient dikes accompany them, 
winding and turning with the winding and 
turning of the rivers, unbroken banks of green 
grass, frail enough to look at when one thinks 
of their mission, yet trusted sentinels to keep 
back the water until even Fundy's mighty rush 
has been conquered, and the diked rivers are 
slowly being silted full and themselves help to 
form a barrier against the incoming tides. 

40 



Acadia 

Much of the northern part of the CornwalHs 
Valley, which for many miles is mostly low- 
land, and was originally salt marsh, has been 
reclaimed from the sea, and in many places the 
farm-land still lies below high-water mark. 

The reclaimed land has not been the work 
of a moment nor of a generation. The valley 
we see to-day is not the valley the Acadians 
first looked upon, nor yet the valley from 
which they were finally expelled. Their suc- 
cessors have as steadily plied the diking spade 
as they did themselves, and the work of re- 
claiming new land is still going on wherever 
opportunity offers. The breaking of a dike 
means inundation and devastation to the land 
with a loss of two or three years' crops, as it 
takes the earth that long to recover from the 
taste of the salt water. 

Standing on Look Off we saw the general 
outlines of the valley as it is to-day, and saw, 
too, in a large way, the method of its emer- 
gence from the bottom of the sea. For winding 
here and there were gently rounded gullies 
down which now ran streams of trees and 
bushes, but which once were water-courses 
where the retreating tides drained back to 

41 



Down North and Up Along 

Minas. Little by little the dikes encroached 
upon the sea, cutting off first one, then another 
of these tidal streams, until only their forms 
are now left to tell the story of what they 
once were. 

The Cornwallis Valley was aglow with 
colour the day we saw it from Look Off, — 
yellow stubble of oats and barley mingled with 
patches of bright red and of vivid green where 
vegetables were growing, while apple orchards 
everywhere lent their dark green, and clumps 
of firs added their black to the scene. 

Scattered about were villages nearly hidden 
by trees, while detached houses looked like toys 
in the fields. Canning's spires showed over 
her tree-tops, and Kingsport lay in full view 
on the shore of Minas Basin. 

In the distance, beyond the shine of the 
Cornwallis River, lay Grand Pre, the scene of 
the Great Expulsion, the home of Evangeline, 
the central point of interest for all that region. 
We looked at the blur on the distant hillside 
which we were told was Grand Pre, with a rush 
of emotion. For a moment the poetry and 
romance of the past replaced the prose of the 
present. But our thoughts soon returned to 

42 



Acadia 

the actual scene before us : the opening of the 
five rivers was a fairy picture, so dainty was 
the blue and green of the water against the 
faint red sands. 

For the three tidal rivers are not all the 
rivers we see from our high place. From 
behind a long point of land in the distance 
over by Grand Pre shines the silvery mouth 
of the Gaspereaux, which flows through a 
valley of the same name behind the high- 
land that far away looks so blue, and the 
broad mouth of the Avon makes up like a 
wide bay into the distant land. 

At our very feet is the valley of the Pereau. 
But where is the river Pereau ? It is where the 
Habitant and the Canard will one day be ; 
for where once a tidal river guided the waters 
back to the sea are now green meadows. 

The Pereau has been diked down to within 
an inch of its life and within a mile of the sea. 
This broad little mile-long river has a pretty 
curved dike across its head. It cannot reach 
above the dike, and it can hardly reach to it, 
for this stern dike has not only cut off all 
advance, but is the cause of the filling in of 
what little of the river is left. And one day 

43 



Down North and Up Along 

they will build a dike yet lower, and then 
another and another, until the Pereau River, 
like the Acadians themselves, will be but a 
name. It is very pretty at the mouth of the 
Pereau. Red cliffs stand out in the water free 
from the mainland, and what banks the river 
has left are steep and red. 

The shores of Minas are steep, and are evi- 
dently the source from which the dike-lands 
have received their fertile soil. The red rocks 
of the coast have been reduced by the irresist- 
ible force of the water to the red mud of the 
fields. The tide for ages has swept in, turbid 
with particles of the rocks it has ground to 
powder, and as its waters drained slowly back 
to the sea, red mud has been left on the plains 
and in the rivers. 

There is talk of building a monster dike 
across the mouth of the lagoon into which the 
three tidal rivers empty, thus reclaiming a vast 
tract of land at one effort. If this is done, 
good-bye to the Habitant, the Canard, and the 
Cornwallis. They would be in worse plight 
than the Pereau is now, for there would not 
be so much as a trace of their turbid tide- 
waters left. It would be a pity to obliterate 

44 



Acadia 

these rivers. Queer gashes in the soil with 
their streams constantly turned by the god- 
dess who rules the tides, Acadia would not 
be Acadia without them. 

Think of having to consult the almanac or 
look out of the window to see whether the 
river that flows through your town happens 
to be running up stream or down, or not at 
all ! Yet this is what the dweller in Acadia 
must do when he wishes to float his boat. 

Fortunately for the Habitant, the Canard, 
and the CornwaUis, there is a good deal of 
red tape involved in building a new dike, so 
they may breathe freely for yet a time. May 
they long continue to run uphill, then run 
down, then run dry, in their present agreeable 
fashion ! Not all of them run dry, however ; 
some have a fresh-water stream of their own ; 
and where this is the case they can never be 
diked wholly out of existence. 

We had noticed very little wild life of any 
kind in Nova Scotia. Birds there may be in 
the spring, but at this time their forms were 
seldom seen. The most noticeable creatures 
were small grasshoppers with large ideas of 
the value of noise. Each appeared to be pos- 

45 



Down North and Up Along 

sessed of an indestructible pair of clappers 
upon which it played a resounding rat-tat-tat 
at short intervals. They started from under 
our feet at Digby and fled from before us at 
Look Off. 

It was some time before we could really 
believe the loud and regular rattle came from 
such tiny performers. We should have liked 
to see them working their clappers, but could 
not catch them at it, nor catch them at all, they 
were so overloaded with suspicion, and when 
we were yet far away scurried off rat-tatting to 
yet safer distances. 

It was on sunny Look Off that we made our 
first and only acquaintance with Nova Scotia 
bees. While lying on the ground we had 
noticed a distinct odour of honey, for which 
we could not account, as there were no flowers 
near. 

At first too full of the beauties of the Corn- 
wallis Valley to see anything else, we finally 
noticed numbers of tiny gray gauzy-winged bees 
flying about and hovering over the ground near 
us. The ground was perforated in all direc- 
tions with round holes into which here and there 
a bee disappeared, her hindmost legs laden with 

46 



Acadia 

balls of bright yellow pollen. It soon dawned 
upon us that we were lying at our ease upon a 
colony of bees' nests, — a position more novel 
than assuring. The bees did not offer to sting 
us, although we were sadly interfering with their 
domestic duties by covering up their holes. 

As soon as we realised the state of affairs, we 
departed in as orderly a manner as was com- 
patible with extreme haste. Curiosity, how- 
ever, compelled us to dig out one of the holes. 
The little hole went down for some distance in 
a straight line and then turned and for an inch 
or two ran parallel to the surface, then went 
down for a short distance in a slanting direc- 
tion. About half-way down the long gallery, 
we dug out Madam Bee, very much flustered, 
and overwhelmed with grief and indignation. 

At the termination to the gallery we found 
a mass of pollen about as large as a white bean 
and enclosed in a glistening case, looking like 
a very delicate pupa case, and made, no doubt, 
from a secretion from the bee's mouth. This 
little object when crushed had a strong odour of 
honey and also a slight odour of cheese. Into 
this mass of nutriment the bee had doubtless 
deposited her egg. It must have taken a long 

47 



Down North and Up Along 

time and a vast amount of hard work to dig 
that long gallery through the hard earth and 
collect that mass of pollen and honey bit by 
bit from distant flowers. 

As we looked at the ruins of a once happy 
home, we felt the self-satisfied regret of the 
conqueror at the discomfiture of the conquered. 
The self-control of the bees was remarkable. 
They flew about us in great excitement, but 
their anger was not of that stinging nature which 
makes one so anxious to respect the privacy of 
bees. One flew at M. and administered a 
sharp admonitory rap on the cheek, but used 
no more pointed argument. 

The Christian fortitude of these bees might 
have made us uncomfortably ashamed of our 
part in the adventure, had it not occurred to us 
in time that possibly the reason for their for- 
bearance was not because they were good, but 
because they were stingless. 

This thought recalled the picture of Hum- 
boldt sitting on the mountain-side above 
Caracas, where small hairy stingless bees crawled 
over his hands. These bees were called 
" Angelitos" by the natives; and we on North 
Mountain also met our Angelitos. 
48 



IV 
ACADIA' S CROPS 

THE people say, with as much mod- 
esty as the statement allows, that the 
land reclaimed from the sea is the 
most fertile in the world. One goes 
there, expecting he scarcely knows what in the 
way of luxuriant vegetation, and is astonished 
to find this remarkable fertility and endless 
boasting devoted to — hay ! 

Hay is no doubt a very good thing — in its 
way. Still, one does not expect to find it the 
main crop of" the richest soil on earth," when, 
too, that favoured soil is decidedly limited in 
quantity. We were heretofore accustomed to 
think of hay as an agricultural product ob- 
tained from the dooryards and fence corners 
and a few hay-fields here and there where 
the land was not needed for more important 
crops. 

There are no wheat-fields in the Cornwallis 
Valley ; the people say they can raise wheat, 
but are full of excuses for not doing it. The 
4 49 



Down North and Up Along 

truth is, wheat does not thrive as well as hay. 
Every effort was made to impress upon us the 
marvellous fertility of the soil — expressed in 
terms of hay. They told us they cut three 
tons to the acre. But they might as well have 
said thirty, such was our ignorance concerning 
Nova Scotia's favourite crop, and we neither 
looked nor were the least astonished. Our 
indifference troubled them, and from the ques- 
tions they asked we suspect they feared we 
knew of a place in " America " where more 
was cut. 

Before we left the Cornwallis Valley, the 
mists of our ignorance had been penetrated by 
the light of knowledge. In spite of ourselves 
we finally acquired a certain reverence for hay 
and a proper appreciation of three tons to the 
acre. M. was quickly reconciled to it because 
the stacks were so pretty, and the shorn 
meadow-land was lovely in the autumn land- 
scape. It is not probable the people them- 
selves consume hay ; but what do they do with 
it ? For there are no flocks or herds to be 
seen. And what else can they consume, when 
their broad and fertile lands are broad and 
fertile hay-fields ? Hay and apples ! 

50 



Acadia s Crops 

Acadia's crop was a fragrant one at least, and 
if we could not at once appreciate three tons of 
hay to the acre, we were able to grasp the 
meaning of a hundred barrels of apples to the 
acre, which netted the farmer two dollars a 
barrel. That was better than raising oranges 
in Florida. We happened to know something 
about the latter occupation, and for a moment 
coveted Nova Scotia's orchards in exchange 
for certain groves whose golden hopes had 
never blossomed into realities. 

It was something of a comfort to know the 
Cornwallis Valley apple-trees require almost as 
much petting as Florida oranges, — that they 
are subject to disease and parasite and have to 
be scrubbed and scraped, and, for all we know 
to the contrary, sprayed occasionally. 

It had always seemed to us as though apple- 
trees happened, as though they grew by some 
special law of their own and asked nothing of 
man but room to stand in. But this is not so. 
If man wants fair apples, he must needs look 
to his trees. 

The apple-trees of Acadia are not the gnarled 
and delightful friends of our New England 
childhood. They have regular rounded crowns, 
51 



Down North and Up Along 

and, in spite of some wilful turnings of tough 
limbs, are on the whole rather conventional 
and strait-laced apple-trees. 

The orchards have something of the regu- 
larity which so displeases at one's first sight 
of an orange grove. But the orchards are 
more picturesque than the groves, because an 
apple-tree, no matter how well bred, never can 
escape a touch of wilfulness. 

Usually apple-trees growing near the sea 
depart very decidedly from the inland form. 
On the more exposed parts of Cape Cod, for 
instance, where they can be persuaded to grow 
at all, they act in a most grotesque manner. 
As if afraid to raise their heads for fear of 
having them blown off, they branch out close 
to the ground, and sometimes have a crown as 
broad as an ordinary full-grown tree and a 
trunk only a few inches in height. 

Others, as if trying to get above the winds, 
or as if their fibres had been drawn out by 
them, grow tall and narrow with a crown that 
often leans away from the prevailing winds. 
These are the sort that make certain parts of 
Rhode Island so picturesque. 

But the Nova Scotia apple-trees keep to 



Acadia s Crops 

their ancestral form as a rule, though we did 
see some orchards not far from Minas, where 
the crowns had turned over in defiance of law 
and order, until the branches on the lower 
side touched the ground. It gave them a 
rakish air, as though they had their hats 
cocked on one side, and made them look 
very jolly. 

Apples were not ripe when we were among 
the orchards, but they were nearly grown, and 
showed what they would become. Either it 
pays as well to care for apple-trees as for any- 
thing else, or Nova Scotia apples are, if not, 
as their owners modestly claim, the very best 
apples in the world, yet very fine apples in- 
deed. For, as we noticed when first seeing 
them, they are fair, well formed, and uniform 
in size. One almost never sees a gnarled or 
spotted apple on these trees. 

The apples themselves are hard and crisp, 
as though they knew a thing or two, and felt 
the responsibihty of preparing themselves for 
a trip to London, or to the West Indies, 
where they find their market. They retain 
their crispness when ripe, and are juicy and 
good in flavour, as we had opportunity to dis- 
ss 



Down North and Up Along 

cover later. They command higher prices at 
home than abroad ; at least we bought them in 
Baddeck at the rate of six dollars a barrel. 

The Nova Scotians complain that they can- 
not get good apples because the best are sent 
to England. Discrimination against home 
consumers and in favour of foreign markets is 
not peculiar to Nova Scotia, however. One 
hears the same story the world over wherever 
the commodities of a place are exported. 

We recall the apology of a Florida Cracker 
from whom we tried to buy some early vege- 
tables: "We have none that are fit to eat. 
We shipped all the best. All that we could n't 
ship we fed to the pigs, and what the pigs 
would n't eat we ate ourselves." 

London pays well where apples are good, but 
does not take her fruit upon faith even from 
her loyal provinces, as a certain farmer learned 
to his cost. The story goes that he shipped 
his apples as they grew, best and poorest to- 
gether, but by some chance the best were on 
top. In London each barrel was tested, 
clear to the bottom^ and all of his were rejected. 
Thus he lost his whole crop plus the cost of 
transportation, a calamity which ruined him 

54 



Acadia s Crops 

past recovery. We were very sorry to hear 
such a story of an Acadian farmer. 

Kingsport is only one mile from Canning. 
It is on Minas Basin and is the port whence 
many of the Cornwallis Valley apples are 
shipped. 

Potatoes are also shipped from here in large 
quantities, and the Cornwallis Valley farmer, we 
were told, is the aristocrat of the Lower Prov- 
inces. His neighbours accuse him of having 
grown lazy under prosperity, and pretend to 
look scornfully upon his sloth, though one 
suspects this attitude is but the cloak to a 
secret envy. 

Apples and potatoes do come easy in the 
Cornwallis Valley, and the necessity for work 
is the cause of work the world over, still, we 
have seen lazier people In our travels than the 
Cornwallis Valley farmers. 

Naturally the people in this part of the 
country do not look with favour upon annexa- 
tion. They say, " Look at the American 
farmer, then look at us ! " One does not Hke 
to look at the American farmer and then look 
at them. 

The farmer here is the man of the com- 
55 



Down North and Up Along 

munity, he is rich, — in a mild way, — and he 
is sure of a comfortable living from his well- 
tilled acres. He feeds the rest of the world, 
and in return is allowed enough to eat himself. 

In the towns, we are told, it is different. 
The struggle there is severe, and the people 
do not look with disfavour upon annexation. 
They have a sort of undefined feeling that an- 
nexation would somehow turn the stream of 
the farmer's prosperity into the coffers of the 
townspeople. It is very likely it would. 

Kingsport is a convenient place from which 
to visit Parrsboro, on the other shore of Minas, 
as a boat runs between the two places. 

It is a pity to cut the Acadian country in 
two by interpolating Parrsboro between the 
region about Canning and the Grand Pre 
portion, but it is very much the easier way. 
As the narrator, however, is not, like the trav- 
eller, influenced by considerations of time or of 
cost, Parrsboro shall wait its turn, and Grand 
Pre stand where it belongs geographically and 
historically. 



S6 



V 
GRAND PRfi 

WAS it an accident, or the kindly- 
guidance of the Spirit of Romance 
that led us to enter Grand Pre on 
the fifth of September, the very date 
of the expulsion of the Acadians ? 

Grand Pre lies on a hillside overlooking the 
Cornwallis Valley, but on the opposite side of 
the valley from North Mountain and the 
Look Off. From it one sees Canning and 
Kentville in the distance, where they lie in 
their meadows between it and North Mountain. 
It is a small and quiet village as one sees it 
to-day, its houses still stretching down one 
long street, as was probably the fashion of 
times gone by, when Grand Pre was the home 
of the Acadians and the thatched roofs of the 
farmhouses straggled from the Grand Pre of 
to-day to Horton's Landing on Minas' shore, 
a mile or more away. 

The houses now are less picturesque than 
the Acadian homes, for their roofs are not 
thatched, and they do not depart often enough 

57 



Down North and Up Along 

from the prim and painted Digby type to make 
the village as attractive as it might be. Still, 
the houses here are, on the whole, better than 
any we have yet seen, and there is many a 
charming sketch to be found in this, the 
most famous spot in the Lower Provinces, or 
for that matter in all Canada, for nowhere else 
in British America have history and poetry 
combined in so wonderful a manner to roman- 
ticise a place. 

On a high hill at the edge of the village is 
a comfortable inn, once a charming old house 
with a quaint doorway, but now obscured and 
vulgarised by a new addition which has noth- 
ing to recommend it but its internal comfort 
and the unparalleled views from its many 
windows. 

From this hill-top the Cornwallis Valley is 
seen stretching into the far distance, a vision 
of beauty, as it lies with the changing light on 
its distant meadows and its salt marshes glow- 
ing with rich colour. For not all the marsh- 
land has been reclaimed ; there still are broad 
reaches of exquisite beauty, to delight the eye 
and tempt the farmer of the future to new 
reclamations. 

S8 



/ 



Grand Pre 



At one's feet lie those broad meadows of 
Grand Pre, for from these prairies the place 
derived its name. Far away shine the spires 
of the village churches. 

Beyond the valley and the villages is the 
wall of North Mountain, stopping abruptly at 
Minas' deep waters, its bold front of Blomidon 
defying the rushing tides. 

Minas Basin with its surging waters lies 
blue in the distance, deceptively smiling and 
peaceful seeming, on a fair day, like a calm 
spirit that nothing could perturb. Beyond 
Minas rise the low mountains of the Cobequid 
range. 

Not only the Cornwallis Valley lies revealed 
from this favoured spot, but wide reaches of 
country are seen in all directions, the high- 
lands across the Gaspereaux vying in loveliness 
with the beautiful valley. 

Meadow-land and orchard, barley and oat 
fields, smile before the doors of Grand Pre 
much as they did in the old times. Only then 
there were wheat and flax fields ; and flocks of 
sheep and herds of horses and cattle were also 
far more numerous, if the stories of those old 
times are true. To-day the people get their 

19 



Down North and Up Along 

wheat and linen elsewhere, and the flocks and 
herds for the most part find pasture in more 
distant and less fertile places. 

Many of the houses of Grand Pre are shin- 
gled to the ground, and some are moss-grown 
and gray as well, and the village has a certain 
distinction from the tall columns of Lombardy 
poplars that stand about. These poplars were 
brought by the French from their home across 
the sea ; and wherever in Nova Scotia one sees 
these tall straight trees, he may be sure that 
they mark the site of what was once an Aca- 
dian village. 

At Grand Pre, too, are the Acadian willows, 
not only picturesque in themselves, but wearing 
an air of romance and poetry that enriches the 
whole scene. It is hard to believe we live in 
the things of to-day in the presence of the wil- 
lows of Grand Pre. There are a few very old 
and very decrepit ones on the road leading 
from the railway station toward the town. 
They can be regarded with unstinted emotion 
and unbridled imagination, for there can be no 
doubt that they were really put there by French 
hands as much as a hundred and fifty years ago, 
and have witnessed the tragic scenes that make 

60 




At the End of the Day 



Grand Pre 

the history of this part of the country so 
memorable. 

But it is in a meadow upon which the rail- 
way station faces that the interest of to-day 
chiefly centres. Across a wide field is to be 
seen a row of willows, and near them is an old 
French well, of course called Evangeline's well. 
There is no question about the antiquity of the 
well. It is as genuine as the willows, and if 
the pilgrim wishes to touch its sacred water 
with his finger-tips one does not see how harm 
could follow. But the stranger who gazes into 
the depths of the well will think twice before 
he follows the advice of certain sentimental 
guide-books and drinks from the sparkling 
waters that once had kissed Evangeline's lovely 
lips. 

Either the water has changed since the well 
was dug — at this period of time it may need 
cleaning — or else it was used to water the 
cattle. It is not a large well nor a deep one, 
and the walls are of stone. When we saw it, 
it had no cover, two or three boards being laid 
crosswise to prevent the unwary from tumbling 
in, or, it may be, to mark its site for the curious 
and eager pilgrim. 

6i 



Down North and Up Along 

Not far from the well are what are supposed 
to be the foundations of buildings, one of which 
is said to be the site of the very chapel in which 
the Acadian men were imprisoned. 

Not long since some blacksmith's tools were 
dug up near here, which of course fired the 
imaginations of all who heard of it, and it was 
at once averred the site of the village smithy 
had been discovered, doubtless the very spot 
where Basil the blacksmith wrought. 

Some one in Grand Pre, we were told, has a 
collection of old French relics which he is will- 
ing to show to any one interested. 

The field in which lies the well is traversed 
by foot-paths worn by the coming and going 
of visitors. In some parts of the world this 
field would be enclosed and an entrance fee 
charged ; but so simple a means of amassing 
wealth has not occurred to the " lazy " Corn- 
wallis Valley farmer who owns it. He simply 
works the land the sight-seer has not tramped 
down too hard to be worked, and leaves 
this field to the fate it has brought upon 
itself 

There is another clump of very large wil- 
lows in the well-meadow, near the fence by the 

62 



Grand Pre 

station. They are veterans indeed of the most 
fantastic forms and positions, some of them 
having literally lain down in order to endure 
the press of years a little longer. 

But the finest willows in Grand Pre border 
an old roadway, which now runs through the 
middle of a farm, and which is fenced in with 
barbed wire. This roadway is near the field of 
the well, and the owner of it cordially pointed it 
out and invited us to walk through it, instruct- 
ing us concerning a hole in the fence through 
which we could enter without difficulty. 

This way of the willows was charming. 
They were mighty willows, hollow and twisted. 
The limbs were as large as the trunks in some 
cases, and they were pervaded with a flower- 
like fragrance which we had never noticed in 
willows before, unless perhaps in blooming- 
time in the spring. This odour came from the 
leaves, and we wondered if it might be the 
exhalations of poetry. 

The old roadway is broad and in some 
places seems to have been elevated. There 
are piles of stones near it which are doubtless 
the remains of the foundations of old French 
houses. There is a pervading sense of peace 

63 



Down North and Up Along 

about the quiet fields and these worn old 
trees, which harmonises with our conceptions 
of Acadian life. 

From Grand Pre to Horton's Landing is a 
pleasant walk of about a mile, but pleasanter 
than Horton's Landing itself is a grassy lane 
near there, which ends at a stile upon which 
one can sit and look at the broad marshes and 
meadow-lands where the Gaspereaux winds 
through red mud at low tide to empty into 
the near waters of Minas, and at high tide is 
lost in the sea that covers the sands. 

The lowlands near the mouth of the Gas- 
pereaux formed a combination of meadow and 
marsh lands which we could not understand. 
There were dikes, but they seemed incom- 
plete and ineffectual, and later we learned 
how a great storm had broken through and 
let in the sea, and how these dikes, whose 
cost of repair so close to turbulent Minas 
had made them a questionable blessing, had 
not been rebuilt. Remnants of them are 
seen, but the triumphant tides have it all 
their own way, and once more the yellow 
marsh grass decorates the rich red soil. 

Wherever accessible, the marsh grass is cut 
64 



Grand Pre 



and preserved, and picturesque haycocks stand 
on stilts over the marshes, but the value of 
the salt hay is little compared to the opulence 
of the meadow-land when protected from the 
sting of the brine. 

Situated as Grand Pre is, on a ridge at the 
extreme eastern edge of the Cornwallis Valley, 
the views everywhere about are fine. 

Wolfville, the largest town of that region, 
is only three miles away on the same ridge. 
It is a college town, containing several institu- 
tions for training the mental and spiritual 
man and woman, being blessed as well with 
a Young Ladies* Seminary. It is rather an 
attractive-looking place with its many shade- 
trees, and from it may be obtained a fine view 
of the Cornwallis Valley. 

Being plentifully supplied with boarding- 
houses and accommodation of all sorts for 
the summer tourist, it is the general stopping- 
place. Grand Pre being a Mecca to which the 
tourists pour in crowds, to gaze, perchance 
to worship, at Evangeline's shrine, to shed a 
tear, and go their way. 

The drive between Wolfville and Grand 
Pre is beautiful enough to entice the pleasure- 
5 6s 



Down North and Up Along 

seeker, even if there were no such goal as 
Grand Pre at the end. There are two roads 
between Grand Pre and Wolfville, — one at 
the foot of the ridge, and the other along its 
crest. The drive over the upper road is one 
to remember. 

Up hill and down we went, past farm- 
houses and through avenues of fragrant firs 
and spruces, as wild a woods road as heart 
could wish, and then of a sudden we found 
ourselves looking down into the Valley of the 
Gaspereaux. It is not a broad, calm expanse 
like the Cornwallis Valley, but a sweet sun- 
filled vale with the river sparkling and wind- 
ing through the middle. 

The Gaspereaux is not a mighty flood, and 
it has no dignity to speak of. It babbles and 
prattles over its stones like a summer brook, 
is crossed here and there by a red-and-white 
bridge ; and near its mouth it is disturbed and 
discoloured by the intruding tides of Fundy, that 
come prying as far as they can into the aifairs 
of the Gaspereaux, and cause dikes to be built 
to shut their fatal salt embrace away from its 
lower marshes. 

Groups of willows are scattered through the 
66 



/ 



Grand Pre 

valley, and farms on gentle slopes lie basking 
in the quiet sunshine. Apples are ripening 
everywhere. All is bright, sweet, and peace- 
ful, and we drive on with a feeling of calm 
pleasure until the fairy valley is left behind, 
and on the other side of us once more spread 
the splendid reaches of the Cornwallis Valley. 

Once more, and from another point of view, 
we see our old friends. Canning and Kentville 
and Kingsport, while close at hand lies Wolf- 
ville. 

We see again the far-off wall of North 
Mountain standing sentinel over the fertile 
valley, and holding back the fogs of Fundy, 
that roll up from the Bay and look over the 
mountain into the valley, but dare not venture 
down to blight its vegetation with their cold 
and damp presence. 

Port Williams is a tiny settlement not far from 
Wolfville, and we see it lying near the mouth 
of the Cornwallis River, its wharves and vessels 
telling of its maritime life, for up to its wharves 
come schooners at flood-tide to bear away the 
apples and potatoes of the region round about. 
At low tide the schooners comport themselves 
with what dignity they may with their keels in 

67 



Down North and Up Along 

the mud and their high sides uncovered to the 
gaze of the curious. 

There are httle groves of plum-trees all 
about Wolfville and the surrounding country. 
There are plums at Grand Pre and in the Gas- 
pereaux Valley, but not so many as at Wolf- 
ville. The orchards there were blue with 
ripening fruit. The trees were bending and 
almost breaking under the burden. Blue 
plums were dominant, but there were also red 
and white ones. 

The farmhouses looked neat, and were often 
picturesque or pretty, and everywhere were 
orchards of ripening apples and little groves 
of dark blue plums. 

We missed the flowers that made Digby so 
charming. Flowers were not abundant here, 
and where they did occur they were meagre 
and commonplace, and in no way characteristic 
of Acadia. 

To Digby belong her fish-flakes and her 
flowers ; Acadia has her dike-lands, her 
orchards, and her romance. 



6S 



T 



VI 

EVANGELINE 

■^HERE are two villages of Grand 
Pre. One lies on the slopes beyond 
the Cornwallis with the broad valley 
smihng before her doors. The other 
was founded by Longfellow and lies in the 
hearts of his readers and within the glowing 
lines of poetry, enveloped by the mists of 
romance. 

It is difficult to separate the two ; and the 
Grand Pre of reality is pervaded by a charm 
not her own from association with the Grand 
Pre of the poet. Lying on the hill-top above 
Grand Pre and looking over the peaceful 
meadow-lands on a summer day, we cease to 
behold the present scene, and the poet's fancy 
rises to take its place. 

We read the page before us, and the forest 
primeval occupies the neighbouring hills in 
spite of the fact that not a forest tree is now on 
them ; and we listen gratefully to the murmur- 
ing pines and the hemlocks, although there are 
not enough pine-trees in all Nova Scotia to 
69 



Down North and Up Along 

murmur effectively, and it is a question as to 
whether they ever flourished near Grand Pre. 
Still, in our imagination they are there, and 
we shall no doubt learn that the image we have 
so long held of them is far more enduring than 
are our memories of Grand Pre as we saw it in 
reality. 

As we read on out of the poet's book we live 
in a strange dream-world, where ever and anon 
the modern English houses are blotted out and 
along the single street of Grand Pre straggle 
the poet's houses with their overhanging 
thatched roofs, their dormer windows, and their 
quaint doorways. 

In spite of the stones lying prone in the 
meadow by the well, we see the chapel with its 
uplifted cross, not on the lowlands, but on the 
side of the ridge, where in our imagination the 
quaint and comfortable houses stand. We know 
exactly what mound it occupied and how the 
houses were grouped about it. In spite of the 
coffins recently exhumed from the meadow 
below, we know the burying-ground of our 
Grand Pre lies by the wall of our chapel. 

The broad-eaved barns, low-thatched and 
bursting with the harvest, cluster like separate 

70 



Evangeline 

villages each about Its farmhouse, as the poet 
has shown them to us. 

Down toward Horton's Landing — apart, as 
the poet has set it, and as it should be — is the 
peaceful and charming home of Evangeline. 
There in the broad-beamed house she lives 
with her father. We see her as distinctly as 
we see the young girl of to-day passing along 
the street, far more distinctly, for we shall for- 
get the young girl, but Evangeline's face and 
form will linger in our minds for ever. . 

We know her as well as we know the 
members of our household, and here in Grand 
Pre she seems very near to us. We know she 
is sitting at her spinning-wheel down there by 
Horton's Landing, in the home of her father 
with its oaken beams. She is fair, and bright 
with the sparkle of French vivacity that plays 
in her black eyes, which flash and soften with 
succeeding emotions. 

She is clad in the picturesque attire of her 
country people ; and in the corner near her is 
the great loom where she sits through the 
winter, weaving cloth for the family and laying 
up piles of linen against a day that is nearing, 
and about which she is dreaming. 

71 



Down North and Up Along 

We too dream as we read. We see her not 
only in her home but abroad on Sunday, wend- 
ing her way to the chapel, clad in her blue 
kirtle and wearing her Norman cap and ances- 
tral ornaments. We see her townspeople in 
bright colours about her, but she is not of them ; 
she stands alone, something rare in this world, 
precious to us in a deep and primal sense. 

Whether the poet meant it or not, in 
Evangeline he has given us not an individual, 
but a type. She does not belong to any time 
or to any place; she is the great, patient, suffer- 
ing type of womanhood which shall outlive 
nations and races. We follow her with rever- 
ence, not because she is a village maiden, fair 
and gentle, but because of her awful mission, 
because of her triumph over circumstance and 
failure, and because in Evangeline's hand-to- 
hand struggle with the adverse forces of this 
world, we each discern our own battle. 

We linger in imagination with Evangeline 
in her youth. We lovingly watch her as she 
moves about and is greeted by the villagers 
with the same reverence we ourselves feel for 
her. They do not know why they feel thus 
to this young girl ; but we know, for they too 

72 



Evangeline 

are the creatures of our imagination, and over 
them all we have cast the spell of Evangeline's 
future. They too go forth and suffer, but we 
do not think of that ; we follow only the figure 
the poet has shown us and the one life he 
has illumined. 

We see Gabriel, Evangeline's lover, but he 
is less well defined. Perhaps more clearly 
stands out Gabriel's father, Basil the black- 
smith, and Evangeline's own sunny-hearted 
and well-loved sire. These people are all, to 
our imagination, of superior clay; they are the 
well beloved of the poet, they and all their 
neighbours. 

It is from the first pages of Longfellow's 
" Evangeline" we get that sense of peace and 
blessedness which has confused Acadia with 
Arcadia in the minds of so many. 

From our place on the hillside, the magic 
book in our hand, we watch the peaceful days 
glide by, we see the coming home of the herds 
at night, and listen to the love-song of Evan- 
geline as she awaits the coming of her lover 
Gabriel. We witness the betrothal and attend 
the feast, and listen lightly to the ominous 
rumours of hostile import. 

73 



Down North and Up Along 

We know what is to come, yet the poet's 
magic chains us to the joyful present. We 
think only of Evangeline and Gabriel, — she 
filled with deep and holy joy at the approach- 
ing perfection of her womanhood, and he filled 
with love and ambition for her. We know 
their hopes will never be realised, yet we re- 
joice as they do, as though we were, like them, 
oblivious of the future. 

While we are still lying on our hillside, a 
change comes over the face of Grand Pre. It 
is the fall of the year, and the deep peace of the 
happy valley is broken by the noise of drums 
and the wailing of women and children. 
Evangeline's father, Basil the blacksmith, 
Gabriel, and all the men of the village are 
imprisoned in the chapel, where they had been 
summoned to hear the will of their masters ; 
and the fiat has gone forth that the French 
Acadians shall be driven away as exiles, their 
homes and their property confiscated to the 
English Crown. 

There is something so cruelly inhuman in 
this decree and in the scenes that follow, as 
the poet has portrayed them, that we forget the 
facts of history and are carried away by the 

74 



Evangeline 

same rushing tide of feeling that overwhelmed 
the victims. Our indignation blazes with theirs 
and our tears flow with them, as we go from 
house to house and see the misery that has in 
a moment overtaken our Acadia, our Isles of 
the Blessed. 

We execrate the terrible decree in spite of 
the excuses history presents, for here we are 
not in the realm of history. We are in the 
poet's land of Acadia, and these cherished peo- 
ple are being wantonly scattered and destroyed, 
driven forth without cause and without right of 
appeal. 

Over there, where we can see the shining 
mouth of the Gaspereaux, the English ships 
are waiting. Cruel hands guard the men in 
the chapel while the women bear their house- 
hold goods to the shore. 

And now Evangeline begins the fulfilment 
of that sacred promise of her future. She does 
not wait to weep, nor does she fall in despair. 
Over her seventeen summers of gracious youth 
is suddenly dropped the mantle of life's tragedy, 
which she never more will cast aside. 

The past held a delusion, although she does 
not know it yet ; her womanhood must be per- 

75 



Down North and Up Along 

fected, not through the fulfilment of her dearest 
hope, but through abnegation of all she most 
desires ,• and she applies herself to the care 
of her neighbours, comforting and helping 
them, and thus in a measure stilling her own 
pain. 

The tragedy of Grand Pre hastens to a con- 
clusion. The prisoners are marched under 
guard to the ships. We see the long line of 
them, the young men first, their faces set and 
grim, and their powerful muscles strained but 
helpless to serve them against the oppressor. 

For a moment Evangeline flashes before our 
eyes ; she is in the arms of Gabriel. Our hearts 
are oppressed with the doom which we know has 
fallen, butherS;, in spite of the horrible situation, 
is sustained by the hope of sharing her exile with 
her beloved. 

She cannot remain with him now, for later in 
the procession is a bent old form, her once 
joyous-hearted father, whom she now scarcely 
recognises, so frightfully have the hours of 
misery told upon him, and to whose side she 
hastens. 

Again we see her, momentarily overcome by 
the death of her father, who, broken-hearted, 

76 



Evangeline 

is laid to rest on the shore of Minas by the 
loving hands of the stricken neighbours. 

Night falls, and we watch the people by their 
fires on the shore ; it is their last night, and 
they sit in dumb misery. In a moment a thrill 
of anguish and horror passes over our own 
nerves as it did over theirs, for along the strag- 
gling street of Grand Pre an ominous light 
shines. 

The cruel flame-storm spreads and rages, its 
passion fed by the thatched roofs of the Aca- 
dian homes. This is the last drop, and the 
voices of the people are raised in shrieks and 
groans of utter despair. 

Again we see Evangeline, no longer a care- 
free girl but a full-dowered woman, accepting 
her womanhood and perfecting it in the fire of 
her great affliction. It is her voice that com- 
forts and her hand that sustains, and young and 
old turn to her in appealing reverence, knowing 
now the cause of their joy in her. 

In that miserable camp on the shore stands 
not Evangeline, but Womanhood. 

Lying on the sunny bank, we watch those 
ships of the land of romance sail away from the 
mouth of the Gaspereaux. We scarce see the 

77 



Down North and Up Along 

silver river more plainly than the imagined 
ships, and crowded on their insufficient decks 
are the once happy Acadians. 

Evangeline is there, alone in the world. 
Her father lies by the sea, her lover is on 
another ship, for in the confusion of embark- 
ing, the cruel haste and the urging, they were 
separated. 

We watch the ships sail down Minas Basin 
toward Blomidon. We watch them disappear 
around the bold front of the rocky bluff; and 
we know that Evangeline's and Gabriel's ships 
took different courses, and that these two wan- 
dered over the earth the rest of their lives 
in search of each other, not despairing and not 
staying the hand because the heart ached. 
They laboured for others while struggling ever 
onward toward the goal they both sought. 

We put down the oft-read poem with dim 
eyes. Our hearts go out, not to Evangeline, 
but to the whole world of suffering humanity, 
whose representative she is. Longfellow seized 
upon an event in history but to give living 
form to a universal truth. 

We know the Grand Pre before us is not 
the imagined scene of his beautiful poem, yet 

78 



Evangeline 

we cannot see the old willows and the straight 
poplars planted by the hands of the early 
French settlers without emotion. 

We cannot gaze upon the broad meadows 
before the door of Grand Pre without remem- 
bering the hands that first held back the sea. 
Nor would we if we could. 

Suppose the real Acadians were not the folk 
of the poet's fancy ; suppose the emotion 
expended upon their sad history does not 
wholly belong to them, — still, even had it been 
deserved, their fate was terrible, and their suf- 
ferings were such as will ever appeal to the 
heart of humanity. 

Their history was at least the rough material 
out of which a divine form was fashioned by 
the poet. 



79 



VII 
THE ACADIANS 

IF we have listened with exaltation to the 
Muse of Poetry, let us now turn to a 
graver Muse, that of History, and hear 
what she has to tell us of the Acadians 
and their exile. 

There must be in history excuse for the 
atrocities represented in the story of the poet. 
In order to understand events, it is necessary 
first to make allowance for the theory, now, 
perhaps, beginning to be disbelieved, that a 
king or a government can own and control 
distant lands never seen or in any way im- 
proved by them ; and that those who till the 
soil of these lands and who make their homes 
in them are the creatures of these distant 
powers. 

The story, briefly told, is this. After the 
great continent of North America was discov- 
ered, it was, as all know, eagerly settled by 
colonies from France and England. 

Instead of allowing the new world to belong 
to those who settled it, its resources to be by 



'The Acadians 



them developed and controlled, and the new 
society governed by its members, France and 
England both assumed to be the owners, and 
each tried to drive the other away and gain the 
sole control. The consequence was innumer- 
able difficulties and much bloodshed. 

Acadia, being one of the principal doors to 
the new world, was a favourite bone of conten- 
tion, unfortunately for the poor creatures who 
had settled there. 

In 17 13 the treaty of Utrecht was signed 
between France and England, and among other 
provisions Acadia was ceded to Great Britain. 
Acadia then meant not only Nova Scotia 
and New Brunswick, but also some adjacent 
country, and did not include Cape Breton and 
Prince Edward Island, which France looked 
upon as her own. 

In the treaty of Utrecht it was agreed that 
the French settlers in Acadia should be allowed 
to remain on their lands if they chose, and 
should be free to practise the Roman Catholic 
faith. If they preferred to move, they were to 
be allowed to do so any time within a year. 

Few moved, and at the end of the year those 
remaining were requested to take the oath of 



Down North and Up Along 

allegiance to King George. At once there was 
trouble, for the Acadians, although they had 
been transferred to English jurisdiction by the 
great treaty of Utrecht, had not thereby been 
changed from Frenchmen into Englishmen ; 
that was something the treaty was not able to 
accomplish, and they declined to take the oath 
of allegiance to England. 

The French had built a strong fort at Louis- 
burg, on the eastern coast of Cape Breton, and 
were not at all unwilling that the Acadians 
should rebel against English authority — quite 
the contrary. Having given up Acadia, there 
was nothing, we may well suppose, they so much 
wanted as to get it back again, and that the 
Acadians should help them to do this. 

We have seen the Acadians in the trans- 
forming light of poetry, and they were a very 
agreeable people ; now we must look upon them 
in the prosaic light of history, which does not 
soften the angles or enrich the colours ; if any- 
thing, it intensifies the external hardness of 
appearances. 

Parkman, in the first volume of his " Mont- 
calm and Wolfe," gives us this picture of 
them ; — 

82 



The Acadians 



" They were a simple and very ignorant peasantry, 
industrious and frugal till evil days came to discourage 
them ; living aloof from the world with little of that 
spirit of adventure which an easy access to the vast 
fur-bearing interior had developed in their Canadian 
kindred ; having few wants and those of the rudest ; 
fishing a little, and hunting in winter, but chiefly 
employed in cultivating the meadows along the river 
Annapolis, or rich marshes reclaimed by dikes from 
the tides of the Bay of Fundy. The British Govern- 
ment left them entirely free of taxation. They made 
clothing of flax and wool of their own raising, hats 
of similar materials, and shoes or moccasins of moose 
and seal skin. They had cattle, sheep, hogs, and 
horses in abundance, and the Valley of the Annapolis, 
then as now, was known for the profusion and excel- 
lence of its apples. 

*' For drink they had cider or brewed spruce-beer. 
" French oflScials describe their dwellings as wretched 
wooden boxes, without ornaments or conveniences, 
and scarcely supplied with the most necessary furni- 
ture. Two or more families often occupied the same 
house j and their way of life, though simple and vir- 
tuous, was by no means remarkable for cleanliness. 
Such as it was, contentment reigned among them, 
undisturbed by what modern America calls progress. 

" Marriages were early, and population grew 
apace." 

83 



Down North and Up Along 

Here we have a new and very different pic- 
ture of our Grand Pre. It is difficult indeed 
to transfer the people described by Parkman 
to the scene we look upon from our hillside 
and which has so recently been the theatre of 
Evangeline's drama. Yet let us once more 
dream a dream. Along the one street of 
Grand Pre straggle the homes of the French 
peasantry. They are rude wooden structures, 
picturesque enough, no doubt, with their heavy 
thatched roofs, but devoid of the refinements 
of life and not over-clean. 

It is a community of ignorant peasants, un- 
able even to write their names, we are told 
elsewhere. Brought as emigrants from the 
mother-country, they have settled here and 
industriously worked the soil and reclaimed 
part of the marsh that still spreads before 
their doors. 

Being ignorant and industrious, these people 
had neither ability nor time to make a study 
of the art of diplomacy ; being superstitious, 
they fell an easy prey to those who were 
skilled in that noble art. They loved their 
homes and were content, and very likely, had 
they been left to themselves, would not have 

84 



"The Acadians 



known whether England or France owned 
Acadia, or might even have supposed they 
owned it themselves. 

Not being left to themselves, however, they 
were instructed on the one hand to take the 
oath of allegiance to England, which in all 
probability they would have done quite will- 
ingly, only that, on the other hand, their 
priests told them not to. Very naturally, they 
obeyed their priests. What was the command 
of a distant and unseen power to them, com- 
pared to the actual words and personal pres- 
ence of their spiritual advisers '^. 

Their spiritual advisers should have known 
better than to involve this innocent and igno- 
rant peasantry in so absurdly unequal a con- 
test as a war with the English Government. 
But pawns were needed in the great Game 
of Governments, and the Acadians made very 
good ones. 

The chief figure of these unfortunate times 
is the unenviable one of Louis Joseph Le 
Loutre, vicar-general of Acadia and mission- 
ary to the Micmac Indians. He flourished in 
the middle of the eighteenth century and was 
to an extent the cause of the expulsion of the 

85 



Down North and Up Along 

Acadians. Taking advantage of the ignorance 
and superstition of the people, we are told he 
taught them that allegiance to Louis of France 
was inseparable from fidelity to God, and that 
to swear allegiance to the Crown of England 
was to bring them eternal damnation. 

The word of the priest was the only law to 
the simple peasantry, and they refused the 
oath. When they did take it, they were in- 
structed that it was no sin to break it. 

The treaty of Utrecht was signed in 17 13, 
and the expulsion of the Acadians did not 
take place until 1755, so for nearly half a 
century England bore with what she looked 
upon as treasonable conduct with a forbear- 
ance unparalleled in history. 

During this long period of time, this forty- 
two years, the Acadians, notwithstanding their 
unfriendly behaviour, were not taxed, they were 
allowed the practice of their own religion and 
the ministration of their own priests. 

We are informed that from the beginning 
the priests were the secret enemies of England, 
and when Le Loutre's power began the Aca- 
dians were incited to every sort of violence. 

They were not asked by England to take 
86 



The Acadians 



up arms against their countrymen nor against 
the Indians, who were the friends of the 
French, but they were enjoined to remain 
neutral. They persisted in refusing to take 
the oath of allegiance excepting with such 
modifications as made it meaningless. More 
than this, in time of war they withheld sup- 
plies from the English, refusing to sell except 
at exorbitant prices, and secretly sent their 
stores to their own countrymen. 

Le Loutre, when he came upon the scene, 
stirred up the Micmacs to constant raids upon 
the Enghsh, whom they mercilessly killed ; 
and the more reckless among the Acadians, 
disguising themselves as Indians, are said to 
have joined the raiders. 

Within what she considered her own terri- 
tory, England was nourishing an enemy that 
threatened at any favourable moment to de- 
stroy her. 

This state of affairs could not go on for ever. 
Matters were nearing a climax ; New England 
demanded the suppression of the Acadians, 
declaring her own safety depended upon it ; 
and England would not turn a deaf ear to 
New England's cries, though there are those 

87 



Down North and Up Along 

who claim that her forbearance with the Aca- 
dians was not wholly philanthropic. Her 
American child was none too submissive ; 
and she may well have feared that if the dis- 
tractions of war were removed, the too-fast- 
growing infant might undertake to break away 
from its mother's apron-strings. 

So it is a New England man whom we see 
coming to execute sentence upon the Aca- 
dians. The weighers of events tell us that mat- 
ters grew worse and worse, that the Acadians 
became more and more insolent and insubor- 
dinate under the guidance of their priests and 
actuated by belief in the final triumph of the 
French. 

Finally the Acadians were sternly com- 
manded to take the oath of allegiance without 
alteration, as other British subjects took it, and 
they refused. They were given time to con- 
sider, but the power to consider did not lie 
with them. Le Loutre considered for them, 
and threatened to turn his Indians upon them 
if they complied. They knew this would be 
no vain threat, for his cruel hand had already 
been felt in different parts of the country. 
Moreover, to comply was to lose their souls. 




o 

E- 
z 

a 

< 



The Acadians 



So they refused, trusting, no doubt, to Eng- 
land's past clemency to overlook their conduct 
once more. 

But this was not to be. Hard pressed by 
the French in different directions and doubt- 
less fearful of losing Acadia, — and all that 
that implied, — England determined finally to 
rid herself very effectually of the troublesome 
peasants. 

It was John Winslow, a descendant of the 
early governors of Plymouth Colony, who 
sailed from Boston one day with a shipful of 
New England volunteers to undertake the 
reduction of the unruly Acadians. The Aca- 
dians themselves had no suspicion of what was 
pending. They were the victims alike of 
friend and foe, for two thousand of them had 
already been cajoled or driven from their homes 
across the frontier to French lands, and this 
had not been done by the English, but by 
their own countrymen, the French, who wanted 
their services. Thus removed from their Aca- 
dian homes, all domestic ties broken, they were 
far more willing openly to fight the English. 

Winslow helped to reduce the French fort 
at the head of the Cumberland Basin, which 

89 



Down North and Up Along 

commanded the entrance by land into the 
Peninsula of Nova Scotia, and was then com- 
missioned to remove those Acadians whose 
headquarters were at Grand Pre. Other offi- 
cers were sent to perform a similar duty in other 
Acadian centres, but it is of Grand Pre, where 
the plan was most fully carried out, that we 
always hear. It is believed that three thou- 
sand or more French settlers were removed 
from Acadia, and that over two thousand were 
taken from Grand Pre and vicinity. 

It was a thankless task to Winslow, and to 
his credit be it said he did it reluctantly and as 
humanely as possible. It was decided that 
the people could not be turned adrift on the 
borders of Acadia to join the enemy, who would 
be only too glad to receive and make use of 
them, and so they were put on board ships and 
sent away, scattered all along the English colo- 
nies on the Atlantic coast, some of them even 
finding their way to Louisiana, where their 
descendants may be found to-day, in better 
condition if report be true, than were their 
ancestors in the apple lands of Acadia. 

The same military reason which caused their 
dispersal over distant shores also caused their 

90 



The Acadians 



homes to be burned, so that the stragglers, for 
many escaped, might not return. 

Pains were taken, the historian is careful to 
say, not to separate families or neighbours, and 
few such events are believed to have occurred. 
Yet, whatever precautions were taken, the exile 
was pitiful enough, and even the grave histo- 
rian cannot refrain from expressing the universal 
sentiment as he nears the tragic moment. He 
tells us how Winslow sailed down Chignecto 
Channel to the Bay of Fundy. 

" Borne on the rushing flood, they soon drifted 
through the inlet, glided under the rival promontory 
of Cape Blomidon, passed the red sandstone cliffs of 
Lyon's Cove, and descried the mouth of the rivers 
Canard and Des Habitants, where fertile marshes, 
diked against the tide, sustained a numerous and 
thriving population. Before them spread the bound- 
less meadows of Grand Pre, waving with harvests or 
alive with grazing cattle ; the green slopes behind 
were dotted with the simple dwellings of the Acadian 
farmers, and the spire of the village church rose 
against a background of woody hills. It was a 
peaceful rural scene, soon to become one of the 
most wretched spots on earth. Winslow did not 
land for the present, but held his course to the 

91 



Dowfi North aftd Up Along 

estuary of the river Pisiquid, since called the Avon. 
Here, where the town of Windsor now stands, there 
was a stockade called Fort Edward, where a garrison 
of regulars under Captain Alexander Murray kept 
watch over the surrounding settlements. The New 
England men pitched their tents on the shore, while 
the sloops that had brought them slept on the soft 
bed of tawny mud left by the fallen tide." 

Soon after this Winslow and his men landed 
at Grand Pre and were stationed in the village 
church, from which the historian is careful to 
inform us, he had the elders remove the sacred 
things, to prevent their being defiled by 
heretics. 

Winslow, using the church as a storehouse 
and place of arms, took his own station in the 
priests' house until all should be ready. The 
people did not know why he was there, though 
his presence could not have been reassuring. 

On Friday, the fifth of September, 1755, at 
three o'clock in the afternoon, the little church, 
in obedience to orders, was filled with the men 
and boys of Grand Pre, — an expectant and 
anxious throng waiting to hear the will of their 
superiors. 

The decree was read ; the blow had fallen. 
92 



The Acadians 



Once again we see the crowd assembled on 
the shore. The men are shut in the church ; 
the women carry the household goods to the 
ships. It is not the assembly we saw a while 
ago, however, in poetry and imagination, but a 
crowd of poor hunted peasants, the victims of 
their own ignorance and the playthings of greed 
and cruelty. Their own people have betrayed 
them, and the foreign nation which has so long 
tolerated them on the lands they themselves 
have snatched from the sea and cultivated now 
casts them forth. 

The flames leap up from the miserable 
thatched hovels they call their homes, and the 
cry of despair breaks forth, for, poor though 
they are, those hovels are their homes ; they 
love them and they love the fields they have 
tilled. They are cast miserably forth, outcasts 
indeed, and no matter how poor in intellect or 
in spirit they may have been, their cry resounds 
through time. It is their great sorrow, their 
tragic fate, which appeals to every heart and 
makes the expulsion of the Acadians as it really 
occurred but a shade less pathetic than the 
tragedy the poet recited. 



93 



VTII 
BLOMIDON 

KINGSPORT lies on the edge of a 
bluff below which the mighty tides 
surge in and out. It is a little 
wind-blown village unadorned by 
fish-flakes, for fishing is not carried on in 
Minas Basin. Its wharf is less imposing than 
that at Digby, though the tides here rise to a 
height of over fifty feet; but the shore is 
shelving, and when the tide is out the red 
sands are bare about the wharf, and the vessels 
lie aground. 

The Annapolis Basin is a serene expanse of 
water where one, as it were, feels the lift of the 
tides, while Minas Basin is a maelstrom where 
one feels their rush. 

Once Kingsport carried on an important 
ship-building industry, but her ship-yards are 
now no more. From her pier, however, ves- 
sels sail for London bearing the apples and 
potatoes of the interior. 

From Kingsport one gets a clear view of the 
peculiar outline of Blomidon. A vertical wall 
94 



Blomidon 



of dark gray basaltic trap drops some two or 
three hundred feet from the top, from which 
the fir-trees look over. Below the trap is a 
wide sloping terrace of lighter gray amygdaloid, 
and below that the steep slope to the sea is 
of dark red sandstone, the same sandstone of 
which the cliffs along the shore are formed, 
and of which the rich red mud that makes 
the Cornwallis dike-lands so famous is largely 
composed. 

Blomidon's stern aspect is chiefly due to the 
vertical wall of rock that caps it, and the impres- 
sion it creates is not lessened when one thinks of 
the stupendous catastrophe that placed it there. 

The North Mountain ridge extends from 
Blomidon to Digby Gut, and from Digby Gut 
southward to Brier Island, where it ends. The 
underlying sandstone of the ridge was no doubt 
formed by the action of water at the level of 
the sea, and was at a later period elevated. 
But the bed of trap that covers the sandstone 
the whole length of the ridge was once a vast 
river of molten rock, poured out from some 
great volcanic crater, — or more probably series 
of craters. 

Just where these outlets were, no one knows; 
95 



Down North and Up Along 

but somewhere along the extent of North 
Mountain the great mouths yawned, to be 
finally choked full and concealed by succeed- 
ing geological phenomena. 

Then came the Ice Age, when Nova Scotia 
with her mountains was buried deep under a 
frozen mantle, and when the irresistible, slow- 
moving glaciers emulated the power of fire and 
tore away the softer rock, scooping out the 
Cornwallis and Annapolis valleys, and carrying 
boulders and pebbles of trap across from 
North Mountain, to deposit them at the foot 
of South Mountain's slaty mass. 

Thus fire and ice have wrought in ages past 
with tremendous power ; but a gentler and 
equally potent spirit has been at work for cen- 
turies, filling the heart of the mountain with 
exquisite crystals. 

When the volcanic fires first burst forth, 
they scattered cinders and particles of old lava, 
which formed a deep layer of more porous 
material, before the final pouring forth of the 
main stream of molten rock. This layer is 
the amygdaloid belt, which, being of lighter 
colour, one can plainly see crossing Blomidon's 
great front. 

96 



Blomidon 

As time passed and the trap above assumed 
its present hard state, the porous belt below 
was permeated by the rain-water that insinuated 
itself into all the crevices, slowly, as the centu- 
ries passed, dissolving the silica and its com- 
pounds from the rock traversed, and depositing 
them in the cavities of the amygdaloid layer. 
Here these materials arranged themselves into 
crystals, those mysterious and lovely blossoms 
in the hearts of rocks, and filled the hollows, 
large and small, with the most delicate and 
exquisitely beautiful forms. 

North Mountain Is an exhaustless treasure- 
house, before whose marvels even Sindbad's 
wondrous cave grows poor. Within it exquis- 
itely beautiful forms lie waiting to flash or glow 
whenever the rays of the sun shall penetrate the 
blackness of their prison cells. Here lie blue 
amethysts, agates of winsome colours, and dark 
red jasper, besides many another gem of lovely 
hue. Nor are these treasures held fast in the 
heart of the mountain inaccessible to man. 

In some places the hard trap has overflowed 

the whole side of the mountain and piled up in 

a solid mass, in others it is less impregnable. 

Often where the cliff rises sheer, as at Blomi- 

7 97 



Down North and Up Along 

don and at points along North Mountain 
facing the Bay of Fundy, the tricksy frost 
gnomes have been at work loosening and split- 
ting away fragments of rock and even separat- 
ing large masses which the rain washes down 
the mountain side, or which fall in the form of 
land-slides, sometimes of considerable extent. 

These displaced masses are chiefly composed 
of the more friable amygdaloid. Down comes 
the shattered cliff, in its fall exposing its cav- 
erns of flashing crystals, while geodes and 
nodules of various sizes roll over the sands at 
the foot of the mountain, all to be finally 
washed away by the hungry tides, and those 
of Blomidon ground against the hard rock that 
forms the bottom of the sea basin, until in 
course of time the lovely crystals no doubt 
help to form the mud that makes the dike- 
lands fertile, and the Cornwallis farmers raise 
their hay and oats from jewels. 

But not all of Blomidon's jewels meet this 
fate. At low tide the sands at the foot of the 
headland are bare, and then come the treasure- 
hunters from Kingsport and Canning and all 
the neighbouring towns, and eagerly employ 
the time the tide allows them in gathering what 

98 



Blomidon 



o 



their hands can find ; very beautiful as well as 
rare crystals often reward their search. 

There is one place particularly rich in the 
mineral deposits that fall from above, and its 
name, Amethyst Cove, sufficiently explains 
what is most eagerly sought for there. The 
best time to hunt for Blomidon's treasures is 
in the early summer, after the frosts of winter 
and the rains of spring have loosened and 
washed down the rocks above, and before the 
summer tourist has appeared in force to deplete 
the store, although at any time of year when 
the beach is accessible the seeker need not go 
away empty-handed. 

Perhaps no part of Blomidon's treasures has 
so great a fascination as the geodes. What 
fresher delight is given to mortals than to break 
a geode, a rough rounded stone, often with no 
beauty of form or colour, and discover within 
a central cavity lined with glowing crystals or 
entirely filled with clustering jewels ! 

No wonder Blomidon is said to have been 
the abode of Glooscap, the Hiawatha of the 
Micmac Indians, whose wigwams once stood on 
these shores and who peopled forest and head- 
land with supernatural beings of their own 
99 



Down North and Up Along 

creation, chief among whom was the mighty 
Glooscap, friend of man. 

There is a legend telHng of a mystic stone 
which at night is sometimes seen blazing on 
the brow of the mountain. This is the " eye 
of Glooscap " or the " diamond of Cape 
Blomidon," 

Although Blomidon is willing that mortals 
should see this jewel of " miraculous radiance " 
and even allow its whereabouts to be discovered 
at times, woe to the unlucky finder who should 
presume to remove it. Terrible misfortune 
would be his portion, and in the end the gem, 
by its own miraculous powers, would find its 
way back to Blomidon's brow. 

There is another story to the effect that 
among the crown jewels of France has blazed 
for over a century a great amethyst from the 
treasure-house of Blomidon ; and it has been 
suggested that the unstable fortunes of France 
may be due to her possession of this very 
eye of Glooscap. Certain it is this token 
has not of late been observed on Blomidon's 
front. 

Although one can see Blomidon clearly out- 
lined from Kingsport one must get close to 



Blomidon 

examine it, and this can be done at any time 
by crossing the Bay to Parrsboro. The boat 
from Kingsport to Parrsboro leaves and lands 
by the grace of Neptune. It alternately lies 
on the sand some thirty feet or more below the 
top of the pier, and rides triumphantly with 
its deck on a level with that structure. 

One fair afternoon we sat aloft and waited 
for the boat to ascend to us. 

The captain cheerily announced that we 
could get aboard in a few minutes. It certainly 
did not look so as we gazed down upon the far 
away " Evangeline," but the captain's faith in 
Fundy was not unrequited, and soon the smoke- 
stack began to appear above the edge of the 
wharf 

Soon after we were able to reach the top of 
the cabin which formed the " Evangeline's " 
only deck. Our descent was certainly a little 
steep, but not so much so as that of a four- 
footed fellow-passenger. 

A derrick stood on the " Evangeline's " bow 
and was used in lowering baggage and other 
bulky articles when the captain wanted to get 
under way before the full of the tide. 

This day a man wished to cross with his 

lOI 



Down North and Up Along 

horse, — an undertaking in which the horse did 
not appear to sympathise. 

A narrow bridge with a railing on either side 
was run out from the pier, one end resting on 
the pier itseif, the other suspended in mid-air 
by ropes attached to the useful derrick. Upon 
this unstable structure the horse was finally 
persuaded to place himself, his master standing 
on the bridge at his head, a position which no 
one envied him. The derrick of a sudden 
began to lower away, to the astonishment and 
consternation of the horse, who, whatever he 
may have suspected, certainly could not have 
looked for any such perfidy as this. He made 
a desperate effort to back off once and for all, 
but it was too late. His front feet rapidly 
descended while his hind ones remained aloft, 
until he stood at an angle which no horse could 
be expected to maintain, when down he slid, 
dragging his master with him, both landing in 
a heap in the bottom of the boat. Fortunately 
neither was hurt, and no harm done except 
to the feelings and heels of the horse, the latter 
being skinned and the former damaged to the 
extent of making him desire to jump over- 
board as soon as he found himself fairly on 



Blomidon 

his abused legs. But he was dissuaded from 
so rash a measure, and his wounds comforted 
with tar. 

We learned that this was the usual method 
of putting horses aboard the " Evangeline." 

We left Kingsport and followed the land 
toward Blomidon ; as we neared the headland 
the boat went closer to shore. A loon off the 
port side eyed us anxiously and finally with an 
unearthly wail disappeared under the water. 
" Poor thing ! " said M., " it is crying for 
Glooscap;" and if the Indian legend is true, no 
doubt it was, for according to that the loons were 
Glooscap's huntsmen, and he had taught them 
their strange cry, promising that whenever he 
heard it he would come to their succour. When 
he left the world of men the loons were discon- 
solate, and now they go wandering up and down 
the earth calling for Glooscap. Glooscap seems 
to have spent much of his time in the neigh- 
bourhood of Minas Basin and there to have 
performed his most remarkable feats. 

The legendary accounts of the formation of 

the Cornwallis Valley may not be quite as true 

as the geological story, but they are at least as 

entertaining. According to them, Minas Basin 

103 



Down North and Up Along 

was once a great lake with a wall of rock ex- 
tending across the end from Blomidon to Par- 
tridge Island. It was the home of the beavers, 
and the Great Beaver threatened to flood the 
country with his monster dam. The people 
appealed to Glooscap, and he and the beaver 
had a conflict, in which Glooscap won, and 
swinging the end of the dam about made an 
outlet for the waters of Minas, the same out- 
let through which the tides surge in and out 
to-day. Up to that time the Cornwallis Val- 
ley was a part of the lake and was connected 
with another lake that occupied what is now 
the Annapolis Valley ; but after the opening of 
the dam at Blomidon and the gap at Digby 
Gut, both of which Glooscap achieved, the 
water drained away and left the valleys as we 
find them to-day. 

"If you do not believe it, you will when we 
pass Blomidon," M. assured me, " for then you 
can see the dam," 

As we neared Blomidon, its great wall be- 
came more and more impressive. The iron 
front of basalt frowned aloft, a stupendous clifi\, 
resting on the rock below in fine turrets. Be- 
neath it we saw in detail the terrace of amyg- 
104 



Blomidon 



daloid, fragments from it strewing the sand- 
stone beneath, in places quite conceaHng it, 
and forming streams down the gullies where 
the young trees grew. These fragments we 
knew were scattered full of crystal treasures of 
great beauty and no small value, jewels for the 
roots of the young trees to twine about. 

According to the Micmac legends these 
jewels were placed on the mountain by Gloos- 
cap. It seems that the great chief had an old 
woman for a housekeeper and a beautiful boy 
for a page. He never married, but devoted his 
life to the service of man, teaching him the arts 
of hunting and fishing and curing the game. He 
also taught him the names of the stars and the 
constellations and what little he needed to know 
of agriculture. But there were times when the 
Great Spirit's magnanimity extended to his old 
housekeeper and then he caused her to assume 
the beautiful form of youth, and lavished pre- 
cious jewels upon her. It was during such a 
time that he sprinkled the whole mountain in 
his prodigal generosity. 

From our near view we saw the red sand- 
stone of Blomidon to be crossed at times by 
seams of lighter rock and blotched and spotted 
105 



Down North and Up Along 

with dull green. Although Blomidon as seen 
in profile from the Cornwallis Valley appears 
to be a narrow bluff, its real form is apparent 
when one passes along its front, which is not 
narrow but forms a long wall of rock broken 
at intervals. The headland grew more inter- 
esting and more majestic as we went on, so 
that for a time we almost forgot the water 
surging about us. But this was not for long ; 
we were nearing the opening to the great 
trough, where the water rushes through with 
a velocity of six or seven miles an hour. 

This trough is about four miles wide from 
Blomidon to Partridge Island, and is about 
eight miles long, opening at the lower end into 
Minas Channel, which is itself a mighty trough 
leading into the Bay of Fundy. 

The Atlantic tides enter Fundy at its broad 
end, which lies so as to receive them without 
diminution of their force ; but Fundy narrows 
like a funnel, and the pent up waters, continu- 
ing with the impetus with which they entered, 
not able to spread out, pile up. 

At Minas Channel the same thing is repeated 
on a smaller scale. The already abnormally 
high tide, rushing through the channel, finds 
io6 



Blomidon 



only the narrow outlet into Minas Basin, 
through which it propels itself with terrific 
force. 

When wind and tide are in conflict, the strife 
is terrible and no boat can venture into the 
maelstrom. Even on a calm day the water 
can readily be seen pouring through on the 
flow of the tide, like a strong, swift river, the 
current being distinguishable for some dis- 
tance in the calmer waters of the Basin. It 
rushes along in eddies and whirlpools and 
white-capped waves, which give one a vivid 
realisation of what it is capable of under 
provocation of the wind. 

Blomidon's stern front defies the storm- 
winds and holds them back from the fertile 
valley, but glancing from the rock they strike 
the water, causing terrible commotion. 

Even when the day is calm the " Evangeline " 
cannot keep her head steadily to her destina- 
tion as she crosses the channel, for an incoming 
swirl of water will often strike her and turn her 
several points from her course. 

The sea bottom at the foot of Blomidon is 
smooth and solid rock, where no boat can 
anchor, so when a storm is imminent the 
107 



Down North and Up Along 

boats flee through the dangerous channel to 
the safe waters of West Bay. 

As soon as we were fairly past Blomidon, we 
could look down the inlet to Cape Split, which 
forms the farther edge of the trough on the 
south side, while Cape Sharp is seen extending 
into the water from the opposite shore. 

Cape Split is a curious-looking object. At 
its extreme point a great cliff of solid rock 
seems to have been cleft or split from the 
mainland by a blow from some mighty sword. 
It stands alone, towering aloft, the home of 
countless sea-birds that build their nests upon 
its unscaleable summit. Their white forms can 
always be seen in clouds about it. 

While Blomidon's front extends almost due 
north and south, only the southeastern corner 
being visible from the Cornwallis Valley, the 
ridge of rock which terminates in Cape Split 
lies nearly at right angles to it, extending east 
and west. 

This ridge is a narrow spit of solid rock ; and 
a glance at the map will show how, if it were 
swung about until Cape Split touched the 
Cumberland shore, Minas Basin would indeed 
be a lake. 

1 08 



Blomidon 

Of this M. reminded me as soon as we came 
in sight of the queer-looking cape, and it could 
no longer be doubted that if Glooscap was able 
to swing this dam of rock he had really done 
so. 

M. said it was no harder to believe he swung 
it than to believe he sailed on Minas' troubled 
waters in a stone canoe, which, according to the 
Indian legend, was his usual method of pro- 
gression excepting when he preferred to ride a 
whale. These feats indeed are no more re- 
markable than that performed by Saint Patrick, 
who, as every one knows, is said to have floated 
ashore on an iron door when shipwrecked off 
the east coast of Ireland. 

In front of us as we crossed the channel was 
the bold front of Partridge Island, while down 
the channel, on the same side of the coast, 
stood out the rocky headland of Cape Sharp. 

To the right of Partridge Island, and some 
distance away, were the picturesque forms of 
the Five Islands, for whose existence Glooscap 
was also credited by the Indians as being re- 
sponsible, he having thrown them at the Great 
Beaver at the time of the conflict. 



109 



IX 
PARTRIDGE ISLAND 

PARRSBORO is not on the shore of 
the bay, but lies a mile or more up 
the Parrsboro River. The " Evan- 
geline " goes there if the tide is high, 
otherwise she lands at a pier on the Minas 
shore near Partridge Island. 

Parrsboro is not attractive. The best thing 
about it is its tidal river with tall piers backing 
up against the village. 

Partridge Island — as all that portion on the 
shore near the pier is called — is far more in- 
teresting. The pier there is a variation of the 
one at Digby. It is smaller, though perhaps 
more picturesque, being short and very high, 
and its black, dripping sides, heavily draped 
with seaweeds, contain openings into the lower 
landing which look like caves. It is heavily 
buttressed on the side away from the incom- 
ing tide, by a structure filled in with large 
stones. This was necessary in order to keep 
it from being pushed bodily away by the 
spring tides. 

no 



Partridge Island 



The pier was built several times before it 
could be made to stay there. It was Sir 
Charles Tupper who persevered, and when 
worsted by wind and water tried again and 
again until he got it anchored firm and fast. 
It cost a great deal of money, and in memory 
of Sir Charles's many defeats, the pier up to 
the present day is called Tupper's Snag, though 
it would seem only fair now to re-christen it 
Tupper's Triumph. 

It was a disappointment to learn that the 
pier at Partridge Island was only thirty-five 
feet high. We had come there for the purpose 
of being amazed at the sight of a sixty-feet tide, 
but how could this happen in the presence of 
a pier with a paltry height of thirty-five feet ? 

We had heard wonderful accounts of the 
performances of Fundy's tides, but wherever 
we went the highest tides, the rips and bores, 
those wonderful cross-currents and wave-like 
rushings in of the water, were somewhere else. 
We went to Partridge Island, fondly hoping 
for the tides we had been promised, only to 
find a thirty-five-feet pier ! 

Still, we could not complain of the scale 
upon which the tides were planned there ; and 



Down North and Up Along 

had it not been for that pier we should have 
beheved the tide was coming in sixty feet high 
before our eyes. 

The harbour-master made a helpless gesture 
when we put some questions to him. Said he, 
" Don't ask me about the tides of Fundy. I 
don't know anything about them. Nobody 
does. When, nor how, nor why. I know only 
this, that in summer the high tides come on 
the full moon, while the winter high tides are 
on the new moon. But I don't know why." 

In fact, nobody seemed to know anything 
about the matter. The tide-table in the al- 
manac did not coincide with the " Evangeline's " 
schedule for leaving one pier or the other, or 
for starting at one time or another. " When 
does the boat start to-morrow .? " is the ques- 
tion the traveller must ask when planning to 
depart from Partridge Island. Happy is he 
if he finds the hour not unseemly and not out 
of all proximity to the starting time of the 
Kingsport train. Having found out the 
" Evangeline's " intentions, he will do well to 
take his station at the wharf a good half-hour 
earlier than advertised, for the boat frequently 
leaves ahead of time. 



Partridge Island 



From the queer-looking pier on the shore 
with its theatrical setting of promontories and 
great sea basin one looks across at Partridge 
Island, which is not an island, but is connected 
by a broad curved beach with the mainland. 
It is a rocky headland rising straight out of the 
sea, its iron cliffs holding to their channel the 
wild tides that rush through between it and 
Blomidon. 

Beyond it across the water we saw Blomidon, 
its stern aspect softened by the distance and 
the sea-fogs, and beyond Blomidon stood out 
the distant form of Split. Through the opening 
between Partridge Island and the mainland we 
got a charming view of Cape Sharp, which is by 
no means as forbidding as its name, while away 
down the channel below Sharp lay Cape d'Or, 
though why its golden name we did not dis- 
cover. 

A tall-masted ship was anchored off the 
point of Cape Sharp when we first saw it from 
Partridge Island, giving just the needed touch 
to the composition of the picture. 

West Bay, which lay between us and Sharp, 
is the harbour sought by the boats of Minas 
when foul weather is expected. It is also the 
8 113 



Down North and Up Along 

anchoring ground for the large vessels that 
carry coal and wood from the back country, 
for Parrsboro is the outlet for the Springhill 
coal which comes to it from the mines by rail. 

Standing near the centre of the amphitheatre 
made by the curving beach that connects Par- 
tridge Island with the mainland, and looking 
down into the sea basin at low water, one gets 
perhaps the most vivid realisation of the great 
Fundy tides. 

It is like looking down the slanting sides of 
a colossal reservoir ; and the beach instead of 
sand is composed of large pebbles, quite in 
keeping with the scale upon which this mighty 
bowl is formed. The water kisses the upper 
rim and then swiftly falls, leaving bare the 
sides of the bowl and for a long distance the 
bottom as well. Then back it comes, rushing 
up in small, curling breakers, up, up, until it 
threatens to overflow the land. But this it 
never does ; try as it will, it can but fill the 
bowl and then sink back as though exhausted 
with the effort. 

By perseverance we finally found our high 
tide and found it before our eyes at Partridge 
Island. We had watched it come and go several 
114 



Partridge Island 



days with tempered emotion, for we could not 
forget the thirty-five-feet pier, which, to our 
ignorance, betokened a thirty-five-feet tide. 

Then we began to consider and also some- 
body told us, and we fell to, and wept in vexa- 
tion that we had looked upon and had not 
been amazed at the wonder we were seeking. 

We did not see the tide rise sixty feet, but 
we did see it reach the creditable height of 
fifty feet or over, a very giant of a tide when 
we understood. The sloping sea bottom, 
which is bare some distance out at low tide, 
is bare for a hundred feet at the lowest tides, 
and at the highest spring-tides the obnoxious 
thirty-five-feet pier is swallowed completely — 
as it deserves to be. 

We were told that the highest of Fundy's 
tides, those that rise seventy feet in the geog- 
raphies and geologies, must be sought in 
Cumberland Basin. But we did not seek 
them there. We had come to Parrsboro for 
them, and, lo ! they were in Cumberland Basin. 
If we pursued them to Cumberland Basin, 
they no doubt would flee away to some yet 
more distant spot, and we did not wish to put 
them to the trouble. 

"5 



Down North and Up Along 

We had the same difficulty with the bores 
and rips ; wherever we went they were some- 
where else. So we never once saw the tide 
coming in, in a solid wall five feet high, 
though our faith that it does so is still un- 
shaken. We were told that at the right time 
of year — of course this was the wrong time — 
we could see a very creditable display of tidal 
fury at the foot of Partridge Island. But 
though we did not see the most pronounced 
of Fundy's phenomena, we had the best and 
grandest always with us, the swift filling and 
emptying of the mighty sea basins, the wet 
and dripping sides of the tall piers close- 
grown with seaweed, and the shining red 
chasms of the tidal rivers. 

Partridge Island has the same formation as 
Blomidon, though it is less than half as high. 
From the sea on the east rises a turreted cliff 
of basalt, the lower part of which is amygda- 
loid ; while on the western side the basalt 
forms only a thin covering to the cliff of 
amygdaloid. Underneath the whole can here 
and there be seen cropping out the under- 
lying red sandstone. 

So Partridge Island has, too, its belt of 
ii6 



Partridge Island 



jewels, a broader belt in proportion to its 
size than even Blomidon wears, and its treas- 
ures are much more accessible, being indeed 
within easy reach of the hammer of the col- 
lector at low tide. 

Amethyst, agate, chalcedony, carnelian, jasper, 
and opal belong to Partridge Island, and it has 
besides crystals all its own, while of those it 
shares with Blomidon and the rocks back of 
Digby, some are here found in their finest forms. 

Partridge Island stands alone, a turret of 
crystals on a foreign shore, for the rock com- 
posing the coast back of it belongs to the 
lower carboniferous sandstones and shales. 
The great bed of trap which was expelled 
when Blomidon and all North Mountain 
received their gifts of jewelled belt and iron 
crown ends in isolated bluffs along this car- 
boniferous coast. What has become of the 
intervening portion, that lay where Minas 
Basin now gives hospitable entertainment to 
the fleeing tides of Fundy ? 

Partridge Island was one of Glooscap's re- 
sorts, — he crossing to it in his great stone 
canoe, though when he had long distances to 
go he called up a whale. 
117 



Down North and Up Along 

Glooscap's whales appear to have been de- 
ficient in power to see the land as they neared 
it, and depended upon their august rider to tell 
them in time to prevent bumping their noses 
against the shore. But this Glooscap never 
did. Wishing to land dry-shod, he urged the 
poor whale to its utmost speed, when it landed 
itself high and dry, greatly to its chagrin. But 
Glooscap was not ungrateful, and putting the 
end of his bow against the whale, with a slight 
motion of his arm he slid it back into the 
water. His whales had a great fondness for 
smoking and sometimes asked Glooscap for a 
pipe at parting. This he willingly supplied, 
when the whale went its way, smoking, to sea. 

Glooscap is said to have had a famous revel 
on Partridge Island which the Micmacs speak 
of with awe to this day. It was upon the 
occasion of a visit from a young magician bear- 
ing the name KTtpooseagiinow. Glooscap in- 
vited the guest of the distinguished name to go 
fishing with him by torchlight, and got in readi- 
ness his monster canoe built of granite rock and 
supplied with paddles and spear of stone. Ac- 
cording to the legend, the youth caught up the 
boat as though it had been a birch-bark canoe 
ii8 



Partridge Island 



and tossed it into the water. The game they 
caught was a large whale, which the youth 
landed as though it were a herring. They 
carried their booty back to Partridge Island, 
whence they had embarked, and finished the 
night by cooking and eating the whole whale. 

Glooscap's power over cold and heat reminds 
us of the season legends of other peoples. He 
had contests with his rivals in which each tried 
to overcome the other with cold. When it 
was Glooscap's turn to resist he built a mighty 
fire of whale oil, but toward morning invariably 
succumbed and allowed his friends to be frozen, 
but never forgot to restore them when the 
contest was over. Then he took his turn at 
congealing his opponent's train and succeeded 
in time, though the opponent was possessed of 
the same power to restore his frozen followers. 

Glooscap finally disappeared at the encroach- 
ments of the white man, driven away by the 
wickedness of the people. When he was with 
them all the animals lived in accord and under- 
stood one another, but at his departure there 
was a confusion of tongues, and the wolf could 
no longer understand the words of the bear, 
nor any animal the speech of another species. 
119 



Down North and Up Along 

The great snowy owls went deep into the 
forests, to return no more until the coming of 
Glooscap. They may at times be heard cry- 
ing, " Koo Koo Skoos ! Koo Koo Skoos ! " — 
Oh, I am sorry ! Oh, I am sorry ! 

The children are always pleased to know 
that Glooscap had two little dogs no larger 
than mice which he carried in his pocket, or 
up his sleeve, but which could suddenly in- 
crease to the size and form of the largest and 
swiftest and fiercest of their kind when he 
needed their services. He had a way of turn- 
ing things into stone, and by looking down 
the channel toward Cape d'Or, one can see 
Spencer's Island, which is not an island at all, 
but merely Glooscap's kettle turned upside 
down. He put it there after using it, to wait 
for his return, and there it remains to this day. 
If one passing that way notices large boulders 
or rocks sticking out of the water, they are the 
scraps left after he had tried out his oil. 

Down that way somewhere, too, he once 
turned into stone a moose that tried to escape 
by swimming ; and the two dogs that were 
chasing it still sit on the shore with their 
ears pricked forward watching it, — both solid 

I20 



P artridge Island 



rock. Many, many other marvels did the 
mighty Glooscap, friend of man, perform. 

The Indians are gone. They are no longer 
to be seen as of old on Minas' shore. They 
are almost as mythical at Parrsboro as is 
Glooscap himself; only their legends still 
linger about the rocks and coast they loved 
in days gone by. 

Once upon a time, and not so very long 
ago, Parrsboro was an important boat-building 
centre. At that time the town, what there 
was of it, was down by the shore where the 
Parrsboro House now stands. 

The pine-trees are gone, and Parrsboro's ship- 
yards have lost their prestige. Lumber still 
comes from the back country, and, such as it 
is, makes the wealth of the region, in conjunc- 
tion with that other timber which has been 
preserved in the depths of the earth and altered 
to form the valuable coal-beds of Springhill 
and neighbouring localities. 

" When the town was on the shore," was 
the halcyon period of Parrsboro. 

There is a hill a little back from the shore, 
and between this and the beach the old town 
stood. The terrace above the deep sea bowl 



Down North and Up Along 

was aglow with flowers of such brightness and 
profusion that they are still remembered. 

We should have liked to see the village in 
its flower-garden age. In its nook back of the 
great sea basin, with its setting of impressive 
bluffs that make Minas at this point so splen- 
didly picturesque, and with ample flower-gar- 
dens brightening the stern coast, it must have 
been well worth a visit. 

In spite of the pebbly shore whose stones 
roll under the feet, the visitor will not be long 
in finding his way across to Partridge Island, 
which is as delightful as a mountain of crys- 
tals ought to be. On the land side it is thickly 
wooded with rather small " hard wood " trees, 
as the people here call all but the conifers ; and 
we wandered along a grassy winding path, 
quite away from the outer world, into a wild- 
wood seclusion. 

Presently we came to firs and spruces cov- 
ered with sage-green moss, and then to a 
hollow where the trees were dead, standing in 
close ranks with gray, interlaced limbs, heavily 
mantled with sage-green moss that hung like 
beards from the lower branches. It was a fit 
dwelling-place for the gnomes, its deep recesses 

122 



Partridge Island 



dark at midday, and we felt that lost spirits 
might be wandering there in the twilight. 

Beyond it the living trees were scarcely less 
mossy ; and we were met by a small red 
squirrel that said not a word but stared at us 
in a silent and un-squirrel-like manner, and 
fled wildly into the depths of the forest, as 
though death were at his heels. 

The squirrels here were a strange breed : 
whether the spell of the dead forest was over 
them I cannot say, but they were a speechless 
race, peering out from behind a tree-trunk and 
then dashing away without challenge or word 
of welcome. Perhaps they were Glooscap's 
squirrels, and held us responsible for driving 
him away. 

As we went on, the trees grew larger and 
more apart, and finally we had the surprise and 
delight of coming suddenly to the edge of the 
cHff that stands upon the bay side. It took 
steady nerves to stand on the brink and look 
down the stern wall of rock to the tides below. 
The cliff was broken and terraced on one side, 
and the incoming tide was impatiently raging 
against its hard front. It was an awesome 
sight, and we there got nearest to the tides 
123 



Down North and Up Along 

where they thunder against the walls of rock 
that hold them unrelentingly to their channel. 
From the top of the cliff we got a fine view 
down the channel, — of West Bay with its 
rocky sentinel of Cape Sharp in the fore- 
ground ; of Cape Split in the distance with its 
isolated peak encircled by the white-winged 
birds that continually fly about it ; and far away 
the distant headland of Cape d'Or, with Spen- 
cer's Island to remind us of Glooscap. Here 
and there on the water we saw sudden flashes 
of light that we could not account for, until we 
remembered the peeps we had seen on another 
part of Minas' shore, and then we knew the 
little silver-breasted birds were here also per- 
forming their marvellous evolutions. 

The headlands of this strange shore have all 
a peculiar interest. Blomidon and Partridge 
Island have the romance of their jewels. Cape 
Sharp and the distant Cape d'Or share with 
them in this, for they, too, like Partridge 
Island, stand in their majesty of red sandstone 
and crystal-bearing trap, on the edge of the 
carboniferous coast. They have the same 
formation as Blomidon, and yield their treas- 
ures to the seeker. 

124 



Partridge Island 



The Five Islands are also portions of the 
same volcanic formation, and have their crystals. 

But SpHt has no jewels. The trap here 
overflowed and piled up so that the strange- 
looking cape is made of the iron-hard trap 
only. Devoid of vegetation, devoid of beauty. 
Cape Split is yet the chosen home of the soft- 
breasted birds that continually caress it. 

The most charming place of all at Partridge 
Island was the hill back of the Parrsboro 
House. Up its sides ranked the ever-present 
spruce and fir trees, but the top was open, with 
only an occasional stretch of alders or a sym- 
metrical young fir. 

Uncut grass, now a soft, silvery yellow, the 
colour of a sheep's back, rippled as the wind 
passed over, while great patches of the bluest 
of low-growing blueberries, bright red bunch- 
berries, and deep crimson cranberries made a joy- 
ous medley of bright colours. There were two 
kinds of cranberries there, — one that looked 
like those we know so well in our fall markets, 
and the small upland berry, deep red and with 
a pleasant sub-acid flavour all its own. 

Never saw we such prolific blueberries. 
They grew close to the earth, which was one 



Down North and Up Along 

solid blue expanse wherever they appeared. 
In short, never had we seen such a merry, 
berry-bedecked hillside. The bunchberries 
laughed in scarlet glee all down one side of it, 
while the cranberries did their best to outshine 
them in extensive patches here and there. 
Fair as it was under foot, there was in 
addition a splendid view from this breezy, 
berry-distracted hill-top. 

On one side shimmered the picturesque 
channel, with its bird-silvered Split, its Cape 
Sharp and the rest, while jewel-belted Blomi- 
don and Partridge Island guarded the entrance 
to the Basin. On the other side lay the shin- 
ing Basin and the Cumberland coast, with the 
uprising Five Islands, and nearer the Two 
Brothers, small but jewelled islands like the 
others, where one goes when in need of extra 
beautiful moss agates. Shining in the sunlight 
was Silver Crag, which is not jewelled and is 
only silver by courtesy of the sun, that causes 
its gypsum cliffs thus to shine forth. Far 
beyond is Economy Point, the other side of 
which Minas Basin grows narrow, and is called 
Cobequid Bay. 

The hill-top from which we get this most 
126 



Partridge Island 



extended of all views is so pleasant a place one 
loves to linger there and to come again and 
again. Its outlook is not so dramatic as the 
one on the steep cliff of Partridge Island, but 
it is more charming. For every-day living 
one prefers the merry bunchberries, the blue- 
berries, the cranberries, and the grass the 
colour of a sheep's back, to the terrifying cliff 
with its sombre surroundings of rock and dark- 
green fir-trees. 

The picturesque new red sandstone elevations 
with their overlying trap give to the west end 
of Minas Basin its chief attraction, but there is 
much to be said for the twisted and contorted 
carboniferous beds that predominate in Cum- 
berland County. They contain the valuable 
coal deposits that crop out at Springhill and 
abut upon the shore of Cumberland Basin, and 
they are the source whence come the grind- 
stones that gladden the farmers' hearts, but not 
the backs of their boys, all over the United 
States. 

At Joggins on Cumberland Basin the car- 
boniferous strata are broken off short, as North 
Mountain is on Minas ; and there can be studied, 
as almost nowhere else in the world, these 
127 



Down North and Up Along 

Interesting and ofttimes beautiful formations. 
We heard of fossil trees standing upright on 
the shore, and of fossils as various and valuable 
to the geologist as the gems of Blomidon and 
its neighbours are to the collectors of beautiful 
stones. 

The " back country " is extremely rocky and 
rugged with roUing hills and intervening valleys, 
more or less fertile. The woods are exquisitely 
mossy and the brooks the most distracting 
of their kind, as clear as crystal and as wild as 
the rocky land through which they find their 
sparkling way. Their pools are not untenanted, 
as one can discover by sprinkling crumbled 
leaves on the surface when the inquisitive trout 
put up their noses and display their colours. 

The lumbermen set up their portable saw- 
mills back in the woods ; and the " deals," as 
they call the unplaned spruce boards, cannot 
float down the turbulent and meandering 
brooks, nor yet be drawn by waggons or sleds 
through the rocky wilderness, so sluices are 
built, sometimes many miles in length, which 
carry the water of the turbulent brooks in a 
steady flow down the hills. Down hills and 
across valleys the wooden troughs float the deals, 
128 



Partridge Island 



and we passed under one that spanned the 
valley eighty feet above our heads, held up on 
a trestle with slender spider-like legs. These 
sluices leak freely ; besides, the water washes 
over the sides v/henever a deal comes along 
forming cascades more interesting to observe 
than to pass under. The deals sometimes go 
overboard, and we saw them strewing the ground 
along the course of the high sluice and breathed 
a sigh of relief when safely past the spot where 
a deal might have dropped down some eighty 
feet on our heads. 

One day we bade farewell to Parrsboro and 
trusted ourselves to the mercy of the " Evange- 
line" at break of day. A light fog partly 
obscured the surrounding headlands that looked 
out at us dim and mysterious. 



129 



X 

HALIFAX 

GO to Halifax ! is a command many 
have received, but few obeyed. To 
most of those thus apostrophised 
in early youth "Halifax" had no 
concrete existence, but was an undesirable and 
unlocatable place, to " go to " when one had 
been troublesome. 

Not to have gone to Halifax cannot be 
regarded as a serious deprivation, for the way 
there across the country is not enchanting, nor 
is the city itself uncommonly attractive. 

But if, being at Grand Pre, one does go to 
Halifax and on the way passes Windsor at low 
tide, he will be rewarded by beholding the 
ruddy bed of the Avon during the temporary 
absence of the river, that tidal stream having 
taken itself off and left the ships in its channel 
to lean ingloriously against the wharves with 
their keels in the mud, waiting as best they may 
for the unnatural river to come back and restore 
them to their wonted dignity. It must be 
130 



Halifax 

humiliating to a ship to He in a river that goes 
out from under it twice a day. 

Besides possessing the bed of the inconstant 
Avon, Windsor is distinguished as the birth- 
place of Judge Thomas C. Haliburton, the 
humorist, historian, and man of affairs who was 
born in 1796 and became known to fame as 
" Sam Slick," the prototype of the conven- 
tional Yankee of caricature, of the stage, and 
now of popular fancy, who is amusing the world 
under the newer name of " Uncle Sam." 
Windsor also has the oldest college in Canada, 
King's College, which was opened in 1789. 

Outside of the town, on Minas Basin and 
on the shores of the St. Croix River, white 
gypsum crops out in sepulchral-looking cliffs. 
It is called " plaster " by the Nova Scotians, and 
is mined in large quantities and sent to the 
United States, where, having been calcined, it is 
sold as plaster of Paris, or merely ground fine 
as a fertiliser. 

The mineral called terra alba is found north 
of Windsor on Cobequid Bay. We did not 
see terra alba nor feel special interest in it 
until we discovered with what pride its pos- 
session was regarded by the people. Then we 
131 



Down North and Up Along 

bestirred ourselves and found out that it is a 
silicate of aluminium, or, in common speech, 
just ordinary pipe clay, which is immorally used 
for adulterating candies and paint, but other- 
wise for whitening the sails of yachts and 
making irresistible the boot-tops, sword-belts, 
and scabbards of the brave soldier on parade 
day. 

After a time one begins to have a feeling 
that if he travels long enough in Nova Scotia 
he will find out where everything comes from 
without recourse to the encyclopaedias. It 
brings grindstones, plaster of Paris, and pipe- 
clay nearer to one's daily life, as it were, to 
behold with the mortal eye the rocks whence 
they come. Such things, like apples to the 
city-bred child, had always seemed to us to be 
the product of barrels and boxes in the back 
recesses of the city shops. 

Aside from gypsum, there is very little to 
interest one between Windsor and Halifax. 
The country is stony and overgrown with 
stunted evergreens. 

As one nears Halifax, Bedford Basin appears 
all the prettier for contrast with the wilderness. 
It is a long arm of the Atlantic that reaches 
132 



Halifax 

up into the land apparently for the purpose of 
affording pleasant sites on its hilly shores for the 
homes of the more prosperous " Haligonians." 

Close to Halifax, where the Basin contracts 
into " the narrows," by which it joins tlie bay, 
is a picturesque negro settlement, looking very 
much out of place in this cold northern land ; 
and we wondered how these children of the 
tropics found their way here, until we recalled — 
but not with pride — the slavery epoch in our 
own history. 

Halifax has the site for a splendid city. It 
lies on a peninsula clasped in bright arms of 
the sea, and from the centre rises a beautiful 
hill two hundred and fifty feet high, that looks 
in all directions over sea and land. Upon this 
hill stands the citadel, for Halifax has the dis- 
tinction of being the most important naval 
station of the British Empire in the Western 
Hemisphere, and in order to support this heavy 
responsibility it is armed to the teeth. 

It began its career as a fort, long ago, when 
the Acadians and Indians were misbehaving, 
and when its name was Chebucto. Its fortifi- 
cations have grown with its growth, rather 
faster indeed ; for with a population of less 
-^11 



Down North and Up Along 

than 40,000, it has forts in every direction, — on 
the islands in the bay, on the rim of the town, 
at the navy yard, and, most conspicuous of all, 
in the centre of the town is the citadel. One 
could not throw a stone in Halifax without 
hitting a fort. All roads lead to forts, and 
every walk terminates in a fort. 

The United States needs only to look at 
her sister sitting serene among her forts to feel 
how excellent is peace. 

Halifax itself is a disappointment, — one 
might even say a shock. After having been 
advised to " go there " all one's life, one finally 
goes, to find this city of great expectations 
neither beautiful nor picturesque, in short, 
nothing better than commonplace, a mere hud- 
dle of narrow gloomy streets and cheap build- 
ings ; and it is dirty, too, being addicted to the 
intemperate use of soft coal, — a pernicious 
habit which spoils so many towns in the United 
States which might be charming but for it. 

One feels resentment, too, toward Halifax 
for being a mean city when nature has been 
so lavish with her sparkling waters, her pic- 
turesque hills, and her enchanting outlooks. 
Halifax, set as she is, ought to be a gem, a 
134 



Halifax 

delight to the eye. She ought to be ashamed 
of being less than that. 

But she is not a gem, and she is not ashamed. 
She is puffed up with pride. She is proud of 
her soldiers and of her forts, of her parks, and 
of her public buildings, and of her harbour. 
She has red-coated soldiers, and many of them. 
They are more numerous even than the forts, 
and they are always on the streets, where they 
lend a certain appearance of festivity to the 
otherwise dull town. Their presence is deco- 
rative, but individually these soldiers are not 
very impressive. Many of them are certainly 
round-shouldered ; and with their bright red 
coats and tiny round caps perched on an angle 
of the head and held in place by straps under 
the chin, they look so irresistibly like the long- 
tailed gentleman who sits on the hand-organ 
and doffs his cap for pennies, that it is difficult 
to contemplate them with the respect due to 
their glorious calling. They are gathered in 
from the remote districts of the mother coun- 
try, and present the appearance of having been 
gathered recently and before they were quite 
ripe. 

As to the forts, if a city wishes to glory in 
135 



Down North and Up Along 

the appliances of war, Halifax undoubtedly has 
cause. Naturally one's first visit is to the 
citadel rising from the heart of the town. 

Until recently strangers were not allowed to 
enter it, but now any one is welcome to walk 
about the ramparts and look down into the 
moat ; but no stranger may go inside the fort 
nor make any drawings of any part of it, nor 
use the reprehensible kodak, as a wicked 
" American " was caught doing some years 
ago, to the confusion of the British Govern- 
ment and the betrayal of the mighty citadel of 
Halifax. He probably wanted the pictures for 
his album, but his innocent thirst for photo- 
graphic distinction resulted in closing the cita- 
del to his countrymen for several years. 

There is a fine view from the citadel, and the 
town lies spread at one's feet with all its sins 
upon it. But, after all, there is a certain quaint 
flavour about the place, and the water-front is 
in part really picturesque, with the ships from 
all ports of the world lying at anchor or un- 
loading at the wharves. 

Whatever may or may not be said for the 
city of Halifax itself, there is no fault to be 
found with its very beautiful harbour. The 
136 



Halifax 

people say it is one of the finest harbours in 
the whole world, and notwithstanding their 
interested statement one can easily believe it. 

Halifax has its Public Gardens within the 
town; and just outside is Point Pleasant Park, 
a large tract of land for the most part in a state 
of nature, and very charming nature, with its 
forest trees and outcropping rocks and its out- 
looks over land and water. At one point a 
little patch of Scotch heather is growing. How 
it came there we did not learn, whether by ac- 
cident or design, and how long it will remain 
we cannot predict, as visitors are allowed to 
gather it without restraint. 

Unfortunately, Halifax yields to the weak- 
ness of boasting of her public buildings ; and it 
is only after the " Government House," the 
" Parliament House," and the new freestone 
post-office have been fairly faced and found 
wanting according to non-provincial standards 
of beauty and magnificence, that the disappoint- 
ment in Halifax as a city is complete. 

There is a tradition to the effect that woollen 
and leather goods are very cheap and of un- 
usual excellence in this highly fortified town, 
but like other traditions this has but a slight 
137 



Down North and Up Along 

foundation in fact, with the exception of the 
English traveUing rugs. 

These were a delight to the eye and a men- 
ace to the purse, as it was impossible to refrain 
from buying more than we needed, — an act of 
extravagance which we basely excused by cast- 
ing the blame upon Cape Breton. For thither 
we were bound ; and we hope any one will agree 
with us that it would not be safe to enter that 
frigid region without several English travelling 
rugs of fine texture and pleasing colours. 

Halifax still keeps market-day. Its observ- 
ance is not as important as formerly, when on 
that day only could the citizens get their 
garden supphes. Now there are shops where 
fresh vegetables are sold as in other cities, and 
the old market-days — Wednesday and Satur- 
day — have lessened in importance and no 
doubt in pomp. Their chief patrons now are 
the poorer class of housekeepers, yet one being 
in Halifax on market-day should certainly visit 
the market. Its scene of action is the side- 
walks and streets around the post-office square. 
Here at an early hour the country folk with 
their loads begin to congregate. 

The visitor would do well to go rather early 
138 



Ha life 



ax 

in the morning before the crowd of buyers 
has assembled, else, jostled by the throng, 
he will find himself in a position analogous 
to that of the hero in " Yankee Doodle " who 
" could not see the town there were so many 
houses." 

One cannot see the market there are so 
many people. When seen in the autumn it 
consists of many waggons bearing loads of 
bloomy cabbages, yellow shining pumpkins, 
brown-skinned potatoes, red beets, yellow car- 
rots, and other cheery-looking vegetables, 
backed up against the curbstone. 

What is there about newly gathered vege- 
tables that makes one always want to stop and 
look ? It is something besides their bright 
colours and their picturesque effect. It is faint 
memories of happy childhood hours spent on the 
farm, and beyond that it is the love — latent or 
active — in every heart, for mother earth, from 
whose bosom come these gifts. 

The waggons and their loads were the best 
part of the show. Far outnumbering them 
were the men, women, and boys, chiefly women, 
who stood or sat on the curbstones surrounded 
by baskets of things to sell — or there might 
139 



Down North and Up Along 

be but one small basket containing the week's 
gleanings from the home-patch. 

Eggs were so plenty that we were in danger 
of literally " walking on eggs," and we picked 
our way in fear and trembling. Baskets con- 
taining little deep-red, upland cranberries or 
dark blue huckleberries gaily called our atten- 
tion from the all-absorbing eggs, and one little 
old grandmother had come with two or three 
pints of belated red raspberries. 

Near by a woman had a plucked fowl and 
a handful of parsley. 

A boy sat listlessly beside a pail of snails, 
unconscious that they were seizing the oppor- 
tunity to crawl over the sides of their prison 
and away from culinary distinction, down the 
crowded sidewalk in a vain search for the sea. 

A man near by had a leg of lamb in his 
basket, and another had three large eels that 
acted as if they would like to follow the ex- 
ample set by the snails, but their keeper was 
alert and their hopes defeated by circumstances 
over which they had no control. 

One corner was bright with the flower- 
venders, who presented large trays of migno- 
nette, sweet peas, and many old-fashioned 
140 



Halifax 

garden posies to the passer-by, while near them 
the herb-woman held enormous bouquets of 
gray-looking herbs that exhaled a savour of 
coming turkey-dressing and seed-cakes. Not 
far from the flower-women were gathered to- 
gether some " Preston Negroes " with their 
contributions of eggs and onions. They were 
the basket-makers for this whole camp, for 
everything was displayed in baskets, most of 
them after one pattern, and all made by the 
negroes of Preston. They were pretty baskets, 
strong and of unique design. 

Of course there were Indians. What would 
an open-air market in the north amount to 
without them ? They were across the street 
and by themselves, and truth compels one to 
confess they were not interesting. They had, 
as it were, fallen between the races, and pos- 
sessed neither the charm of the savage nor the 
advantages of the civilised state. Most of 
them were half-breeds, and all of them were 
dressed in the cast-off clothing of the white 
people. They had toy bows and arrows for 
sale and tawdry ornaments such as can be 
bought by the quantity in any city of the 
United States. But they added some pictur- 
141 



Down North and Up Along 

esqueness to the scene, as in colour and features 
they were still Indian. 

Fruit was a luxury in Halifax. The open- 
air market was bright with vegetables and 
flowers, but with the exception of cranberries, 
huckleberries, and small sour plums there was 
no native fruit to gladden the eye or refresh 
the palate. So we had concluded, when sud- 
denly our glance fell upon a booth as bright 
as the flower-trays with its assortment of 
beautiful peaches, pears, and plums. Surely 
this was remarkable fruit to be matured in a 
northern climate, but to our amusement the 
vender pointed to his wares and with mis- 
placed pride uttered the disillusioning word 
— California ! 

The negro in Halifax is an anomaly. He 
is hardly seen elsewhere in Nova Scotia, but 
here there are so many that one keeps ques- 
tioning the latitude. Surely one has made a 
mistake and gone " down South " instead of 
"down North." But a glance at the early 
history of Halifax makes the mystery clear. 
From its beginning this town seems to have 
been a place for the reception of outcasts of 
various sorts. 

142 



Halifax 

Thither came the fugitive negroes from the 
cotton States of the South, and thither were 
sent the insurgent Maroons from the island 
of Jamaica. The history of the Maroons is 
not the least romantic episode connected with 
the history of Halifax. 

It seems that upon the conquest of Jamaica 
by the English in 1655 the Spaniards pos- 
sessed a large number of African slaves. 
These people, called Maroons, refused to sub- 
mit to English rule, but fled to the mountains, 
where they exercised their ingenuity in harass- 
ing the English. After a long-continued and 
desperate resistance they were finally subdued, 
and some six hundred of them sent to Halifax. 

His Royal Highness, Prince Edward, then 
commander-in-chief at Halifax, being g ;atly 
impressed with the orderly and handsome 
appearance of these people, set them to work 
at the fortifications on Citadel Hill, paying 
them the same amount that other labourers 
were paid. We were told that the " Maroon 
bastion " remains as a monument of their 
industry. 

All went well until cold weather came and 
the negroes were removed to Preston — a few 
143 



Down North and Up Along 

miles from Halifax and across the harbour — 
to spend the winter. Then the people from 
Jamaica, half frozen and half starved, wanted 
to go home, refused to do any more work, 
then or afterwards, and became generally 
riotous. Finally, the well disposed were re- 
moved to a place near the harbour of Halifax, 
where they probably formed the nucleus to 
the picturesque settlement which we passed 
upon our approach to that city. 

In 1800 the troublesome Maroons at Pres- 
ton were sent to Sierra Leone, having cost 
both Jamaica and the British Government a 
very large sum of money. 

Other importations and exportations of the 
coloured race followed, Preston being always 
one of the centres of their settlement ; and the 
pretty brown-skinned girls who sit on the 
curbstone every market day with their berries 
and eggs are descendants of those insurgents 
from sunny Jamaica or of the fugitives from 
the cotton fields of the United States. It is 
said the negroes are not yet reconciled to the 
climate of Nova Scotia — small wonder that 
they are not ! — and though many of them were 
born there, they sigh for the palms of the 
144 



Halifax 

traditional land of their ancestors and have 
little zest for the fir-trees of the North. 

One wonders whether it was the custom of 
sending disaffected people to Halifax that orig- 
inated the historic advice, perhaps less common 
now than formerly, to " go to Halifax." 

To go there, however, is not wholly a punish- 
ment, and there is no reason why it might not 
become a very agreeable place to " go to " in 
the summer-time. One misses the tides of 
Fundy here, and there is no doubt that their 
sudden loss has upon the mind of the traveller 
the effect of belittling the charming coast about 
Halifax. All other shores seem tame for a 
long time after one has known the mighty rise 
and fall of the waters of the Bay of Fundy. 



145 



XI 

TOWARD CAPE BRETON 

TO turn our backs upon Halifax was 
to turn our faces toward Cape Breton 
Island, that unknown land of hoped- 
for adventure that lay farther away 
" down north." 

We went by rail as far as Truro, through a 
desolate region of stunted fir-trees and loose 
rocks like that with which the journey to Hali- 
fax had made us familiar. Yet, after all, this 
depressing country may be about to yield up 
some mineral treasure that will make it blos- 
som like the rose in the mind's eye of its 
owner. For in this strange land valuable min- 
erals are ever being discovered in unexpected 
places. Indeed, not far from this very region 
that we have scorned, gold mines have been 
found hidden among the hills. 

The gnomes of the rocks seem to have 

selected Nova Scotia as their own particular 

work-shop, where they have fitted together 

their strange mosaics of multiform geological 

146 



'Toward Cape Breton 

formations, their rocks marvellous, and their 
minerals and metals precious or curious. Fine 
gold, coal, iron, and gypsum have made Nova 
Scotia famous the world over, and to these the 
queer rocky mineral-packed peninsula adds 
marketable amounts of silver, tin, zinc, copper, 
manganese, plumbago, pottery clay, terra alba, 
salt, granite, marble, slate, limestone, and grind- 
stones. Doubtless this is but a tithe of what 
she could do an she would, and of what she 
will render up in the future. 

Although we did not as tourists take pleas- 
ure in the scrubby country around Halifax, nor 
care for the commercial value of its products, 
we are persuaded that the geologist would find 
it of surpassing interest. 

Shubenacadie is one of the early stops after 
leaving Halifax. Naturally one looks forward 
with anticipation to meeting a place with such 
a name. But what is in a name ? Certainly 
nothing so far as the actual village of that dis- 
tinguished appellation is concerned. 

Shubenacadie ! "abounding in ground-nuts" 
— and also in Micmac Indians. The Shuben- 
acadie of our imaginations continued to abound 
in these things ; but Shubenacadie the actual, 
147 



Down North and Up Along 

alas ! contained its whole stock of romance in 
its name. If it had ground-nuts, it did not 
show them to us, nor did it bring forth any 
Indians. 

Truro was as disappointing as Shubenacadie, 
for the maps placed it at the head of Cobe- 
quid Bay, the extreme eastern end of Minas 
Basin, and it was but natural that we should 
expect to see the waters of Fundy there once 
more. Not so. Truro is two miles from the 
bay, a bustling, manufacturing town of no at- 
tractions, but with a great deal of smoke and 
noise. 

A few miles away, however, is Maitland, near 
the mouth of the Shubenacadie River, — a 
famous spot, we were assured, for the highest 
of high tides, rips, and bores. This might be 
so, — we hoped it was, — but we did not go to 
see. We had pursued rips and bores to the 
limits of human endurance, and if they were 
at Maitland — well, we sincerely hoped they 
would stay there. 

Out of Truro we left the desolate waste of 
stunted firs and loose stones and went speed- 
ing along the shores of a river with bright red 
banks, where maples, oaks, and birches mingled 



Toward Cape Breton 

with the dark evergreens. The way grew 
wilder, and we had the exhilarating feeling that 
at last we were getting away from the beaten 
track of the tourist. 

Great beds of tilted and folded rock strata 
rose above the train ; all sorts of geological 
formations thrust themselves into our notice. 
The rocks here are not concealed and covered 
jealously from the inquisitive eye, as they are 
on most of the surface of the earth, but they 
stand forth to be looked at. 

Even in the swift passing of the train we 
saw enough to make us bow before the mighty 
forces of fire and ice that so wonderfully had 
rolled up the rocks like scrolls to be read, bent 
the strata of stone as though they had been 
of parchment, and opened the secret places, 
scooping out valleys here and burying moun- 
tains there. 

Then about us the hills rose, — hills of stone, 
also the work of the colossal forces that yet 
slumber in the heart of the earth. Time had 
covered these hills with soil and verdure, how- 
ever; and they stood above and about one 
another in fine groupings, their noble slopes 
exquisitely coloured with golden-rod and pearly 
149 



Down North and Up Along 

everlasting, and where uncut they were over- 
grown with silvery, tawny grass. 

One expected to see sheep scampering over 
the near hills as the train approached and un- 
concernedly nibbling on the distant ones, but 
this was not the case. Only here and there a 
woolly brother or two or three were to be seen 
upon these exquisite flower-painted heights. 

Acres of fireweed had taken possession of 
the burned tracts along the side of the rail- 
road, mercifully covering the naked and scarred 
earth, as is their habit, their long pods curling 
open in a charming tracery of brown lines and 
freeing glistening clouds of silky white plumed 
seeds, to fly on the wind and find out other 
sore spots that needed their redeeming presence. 
The earth was not greatly harassed by culti- 
vation ; grass grew freely, making now a tawny 
background to the coloured patterns of golden- 
rod, asters, and everlasting. 

The little village of Hopewell lies among 
the hills in the happiest manner, in apparent 
realisation of the wish expressed in its name. 
Its houses are vine-covered, as hope-well houses 
ought to be, and there are flowers to profusion 
in the dooryards, — real Digby flowers. 
150 



Toward Cape Breton 

We had undoubtedly entered a new world. 
The depressing sense of commonplaceness had 
disappeared ; life began to be again original and 
beautiful. The houses were picturesque, and 
so were the well-sweeps that stood against the 
sky. 

There appeared distant blue highlands 
beyond the foreground of tawny hillsides. 
Autumn tints were beginning to soften the 
woods on all sides ; and a long irregular lake 
sparkled down below us, with curving shores 
and fairy-like islands on its blue bosom, the 
whole enveloped in a haze like that which 
comes in Indian summer. 

The country began to look unfamiliar and 
a little foreign. The brakeman's name was 
Sandy, and when he called out West Bemigo- 
mishy with the accent on the last syllable, 
and with a Scotch flavour difficult to transmit, 
we knew we had passed beyond the petty cares 
of a vapid civilisation and were indeed nearing 
those dangerous mountain passes, those marshes 
and Scotch highlands of which we had heard 
and long had dreamed. 

We sped past more rounded hills, often 
shaven and shorn of their hay, and often lovely 
151 



Down North and Up Along 

with their fleecy uncut grass exquisitely inter- 
mingled with golden-rod, aster, and ever- 
lasting. 

" ^Qx'i'gomish ! " Sandy's pleasant, sonorous 
voice announced the getting-off place for the 
village which is not in sight, but which we hope 
is as attractive as its name, lying as it does at 
the mouth of the deep-blue bay that comes 
close enough for us to admire. 

^tngomish ! One should hear Sandy an- 
nounce this, to get an idea of what the word 
can contain of joyousness and jollity. It rings 
out the merriest of any towns' names I ever 
heard; and if yitv'igomish is half as agreeable 
as the sound of its name as delivered by Sandy 
the brakeman, I for one should like to live 
there. 

Beyond Merigomish the mountains rise close 
at hand. They are not grand or terrifying, but 
they ascend with an ample serenity that is 
restful. They are wooded for the most part 
with spruces and firs, lightened, however, by ex- 
panses of bright-green deciduous trees. One 
needs evergreens to bring out the quality of 
the lighter greens, and also by their severity of 
form to give character to the nearer hills. In 
152 



Toward Cape Breton 

the distance their shapes are lost, and their dark 
green makes black masses like deep shadows in 
the midst of the lighter foliage. 

We left the mountains only to find them 
again a little farther on. The near farmhouses 
looked pretty and comfortable, and there was 
an occasional apple-tree bearing very small 
apples, as though it knew what was expected 
of it, and would fulfil its duty as best it could, 
though its hard-borne fruit was " apple " in 
form only. 

And then, beyond the mountains, up against 
the sky, lay distant blue highlands like a dream 
in their loveliness. 

Nearer to the mountain sped the train, until 
we found ourselves climbing the side of it and 
looking across the mist-filled valleys of another 
mountain, its sides all sheep-coloured or clothed 
with fir-trees. 

We hastened through a continually chang- 
ing hill country that raised high our hopes of 
Cape Breton, for the landscape grew more in- 
teresting as we went on. 

We left the mountains, and the country 
settled into a rounded hilliness, always agree- 
able and always covered with the soft green 
153 



Down North and Up Along 

plush of shorn meadows or the silvery, tawny 
grass. 

At one place we passed a village lying in the 
stony bed of an ancient water-course, the little 
silver stream purling adown its spine being 
the only remnant of a once mighty torrent 
that had carved out the valley. Instead of 
the flood of long ago elm-trees now occupy 
the dry river-bed. They stood about the 
houses, fair, foreign forms in this stern land of 
fir-trees. 

hviii^onish ! the accent of all these names 
ending in nish or mish is on the last syllable. 
Sandy sings it out powerfully, but it does not 
dance like the light-hearted Merigomish. 

It is a pleasant enough place, but one might 
pass it unheeded, did one not know that here 
dwells the Bishop of Arichat, that here is the 
St. Francis Xavier College, and here the Cathe- 
dral of St. Ninian, one of the finest in Canada. 
Here, too, are large cheese-factories that minis- 
ter to the temporal needs of the people. Here, 
moreover, the people are descendants of the 
Scotch Highlanders who settled these shores 
in the early part of the century, and here the 
wild Gaelic speech may yet be heard, the cathe- 

154 




Spinning 



Toward Cape Breton 

dral services being part of the time conducted 
in that tongue. Considering all this, it is not 
surprising that Antigonish is a large settlement. 
It is said to draw a large part of its revenue 
from its foggy Newfoundland brethren whom 
it supplies with cheese and other provisions — 
at a good profit. 

We stayed only a moment at Antigonish, but 
sped away and away and past a blue lake at the 
foot of blue hills. The haymakers were busy 
on its marshy shores with the last cutting of 
the season, women with turned-up petticoats 
and bright handkerchiefs over their heads, and 
men plying the decadent scythe. 

Marshy lakes and low-lying hills, beautiful 
in the light of a poetic day, made charming 
this part of the journey, and then of a sudden 
the sea came into view, deep blue in the hazy 
atmosphere with distant shores of heavenly 
colouring. 

Straight poplars and venerable willows 
greeted us as we entered the Acadian village 
of Tracadie. Seen in this light, with the en- 
chanting blues of the distant sea and the near 
inlets, with the fair shores and the picturesque 
group of gray-shingled buildings, the monastery 
155 



Down North and Up Along 

of the Trappist Brothers, Tracadie seemed the 
fairest of all the fair sights we had seen that 
day or in many a day. 

It is wonderful what loveliness a certain light 
can give to the scene upon which it falls. That 
day of days, with a golden haze in the air that 
obscured nothing, but lent glow and colour to 
everything, the hills and towns were enchant- 
ing, and Tracadie, as we came upon it bathed 
in the afternoon light, might have been a vision 
of the Elysian Fields. 

Later the same country was traversed on a 
dull, dead day when everything looked real, 
when the landscape lay flat and no golden light 
and atmospheric life made ethereal the hills and 
valleys, and Tracadie the beautiful had van- 
ished ; we could scarcely believe the evidence of 
the time-table, the name of the station, and 
Sandy's confirmatory announcement, when we 
saw Tracadie bereft of her halo. Beautiful 
delusion of the atmosphere, could one but 
always travel when sun and air were in loving 
dalliance. 

The events of individual human life are not 
very noticeable from the window of a railway 
train, but one little drama we saw enacted by 

156 



Toward Cape Breton 



the wayside. A tiny cottage stood on a hill- 
top near the track ; and in the dooryard sat 
an old man and an old woman, at work upon 
something, we could not see what. As the 
train swept past, the old man stood erect and, 
raising both arms above his head, waved fran- 
tically. The engine responded with a shrill 
salute, whereupon the old man bent himself in 
a profound courtesy almost to the earth. We 
flew on wondering, and presently Sandy an- 
nounced " Harbour au Bouche " with a queer 
Scotch accent to the French name. We were 
less interested in Harbour au Bouche than in 
Cape Porcupine, a bold headland higher than 
Blomidon, and, one should think, worthy of a 
more dignified title, for while one is willing to 
allow picturesqueness to a porcupine, no one 
would think of claiming dignity for that spiny 
act of nature. Cape Porcupine was outHned 
against the blue sea, and in a few moments we 
reached that sea, and also Port Mulgrave, the 
end of the road. 

We stood upon Canso's shore gazing across 
at Cape Breton, the goal of our desire. The 
Gut of Canso it is that makes an island of 
Cape Breton. 

157 



XII 
BADDECK 

CAPE BRETON ISLAND is the wild 
and rocky portion of northern Nova 
Scotia, which seems intended for a 
bulwark against the northeast storms 
that come down past Newfoundland, which 
lies a few miles away from its northern point. 

The island is cleft nearly in two by the sea. 
Its central portion is a deep valley filled with 
salt water and affording safe anchorage to ships 
that come in through the Great Bras d'Or 
Channel, a narrow arm of the sea making down 
from the northeast. Parallel to this is another 
channel, the Little Bras d'Or, through which 
only the smaller vessels pass. 

Many bays and inlets are given off from the 
central basin, the southernmost and broadest 
portion of which is called the Great Bras d'Or 
Lake, while north of that and partly separated 
from it by a point of land is the Little Bras 
d'Or Lake. 

The Bras d'Or lakes and their branches 
almost cut Cape Breton in two, for St. Peter's 
158 






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vU 


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Jh- 


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03 



Baddeck 

Inlet at the southeast corner of the Great Bras 
d'Or Lake comes within half a mile of break- 
ing through the land into the sea at the south. 

What nature did not quite accomplish, man 
did ; and a ship canal, cut through the isthmus, 
has divided Cape Breton into two main islands, 
besides converting the Bras d'Or lakes into 
a safe water-way for vessels wishing to pass 
between the north and the south coasts. 

The country of the easternmost island thus 
formed has a very broken coast and is by far 
the best known. On its northern coast is 
Sydney Harbour, said to be one of the finest 
in the world, only that it is blocked by ice for 
several months in the year. Near the mouth 
of the harbour are the coal mines that have 
made this part of the country profitable and 
have drawn to it a comparatively large popu- 
lation. At the head of the harbour is the 
flourishing town of Sydney, and southeast of 
that on the coast is the site of the famous town 
of Louisburg that played so important a part 
in the wars between France and England. 

Louisburg was built by the French shortly 
after the Treaty of Utrecht, its location on a 
point of land to the south of a fine harbour 
159 



Down North and Up Along 

being admirable for fortification. Stone walls 
thirty feet high, on which were parapets and 
towers, and around which was a moat eighty 
feet wide, protected the town on the land side. 
On the side toward the sea it was guarded by 
forts in the harbour. 

This " Dunkirk of America " was a constant 
menace to the English, and after twice passing 
into their hands it was finally levelled to the 
ground by them in 1760, thus relieving them 
of the expense of maintaining it, and making it 
impossible for it to become again a rallying 
point for the enemy. All that now remains of 
the once proud French capital are a few grass- 
covered mounds. A little fishing village oc- 
cupies its site, and Louisburg is but a name 
and a memory of the past. 

The western coast of Cape Breton has no 
harbours, and the country is very rugged and 
mountainous, particularly the northern part. 
To the west of the Bras d'Or lakes lies the 
" Margaree country," famous for its salmon- 
fishing. This side of the island is but thinly 
populated, particularly the peninsula to the 
north, which is a plateau surrounded by 

mountains. 

160 



Bad deck 

This plateau, which is about eighty miles 
long, is known to the people of the locality 
as Cape North, although the Cape North of 
the maps is a bold headland that stands with 
its base in the sea at the extreme northern 
point of the plateau. 

Few people visit this very interesting pe- 
ninsula. It is not easy to visit, and its attrac- 
tions as a rule are unknown to the traveller. 
It is peopled by Scotch Highlanders, and al- 
though it is traversed by that highest achieve- 
ment of civilisation, the telegraph, it has not 
been " civilised " to any great extent. 

Steam-mills and manufactories in the busy 
world outside have won the people from grind- 
ing their own oats to buying ready-made oat- 
meal, and from spinning and weaving all of 
their own cloth to using more or less of the 
cheap stuffs sent to them from Halifax ; but 
on the whole they live very much as they 
did before steam and electricity metamor- 
phosed life for so much of the world. 

He who enters Cape Breton by way of Port 

Hawkesbury, across the Gut of Canso, will 

very likely be disappointed. He certainly 

will if he expects to step at once into a 

" i6i 



Down North and Up Along 

region of wild mountains and picturesque 
Highlanders. 

There are no such things at Port Hawk.es- 
bury ; on the contrary, the country is scrubby 
and uninteresting, and the Gut of Canso, as 
one crosses it in a wheezy little steamer, is a 
disappointing Gut to the tourist, not at all 
worthy of its uncommon and confident name. 
Its principal virtue is its depth, — a wholly 
commercial virtue. 

That it is a deep Gut, however, and has 
always — since the coming of the white man 
— been the principal passage for ships sailing 
between the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of 
St. Lawrence, did not commend it to us. 

Three miles down the coast toward the 
Gulf of St. Lawrence is Port Hastings, equally 
uninteresting until one discovers that it pos- 
sesses a historic importance out of all propor- 
tion to its looks, for here the first Atlantic 
cable crossed the Gut of Canso. The first 
transatlantic cable was laid from the coast of 
Ireland to the east coast of Newfoundland, 
over the " telegraphic plateau " that provi- 
dentially crosses the ocean for its support, and 
in 1858 the first message successfully crossed 

162 



Baddeck 

the sea. This message was transmitted by 
telegraph and cable from Newfoundland to 
Aspy Bay on the northern part of Cape 
Breton Island, and from there telegraphed to 
Port Hastings. 

Cape Breton Island lies in the line of the 
shortest distance by sea between Europe and 
America; and so, remote as it is from the 
great cities, it was one of the first places to 
be traversed by telegraph-wires, in order to 
transfer the cable messages receivede at Aspy 
Bay. 

From Port Hawkesbury to Sydney there 
is a railroad which crosses the water at the 
head of the Great Bras d'Or Lake, where the 
channel is contracted, and where is situated a 
small hamlet called Grand Narrows. 

The country between Port Hawkesbury and 
Grand Narrows is rough and dreary-looking, 
with much gypsum cropping out white and 
ghostly in the wilderness. As we approached 
Grand Narrows, we got cheering glimpses of 
the blue Bras d'Or, and at the hamlet itself 
uprising hills and blue water revived our 
spirits. 

We left the train to continue Its course to 
163 



Down North and Up Along 

Sydney, for we were not bound that way. 
Others might go on to prosperous Sydney 
and historical Louisburg ; but as for us, we 
preferred to step aboard the httle steamer 
ready to puff its way through the shining 
Bras d'Or waters to Baddeck. 

There is Httle tide in the Bras d'Or lakes. 
Their entrance does not receive the waters 
freely enough to cause them to pile up, as is 
the case in the Bay of Fundy ; on the con- 
trary, the force of the rising tide is dissipated 
before the water gets into this inland sea 
which lies in its land-bound basin, calm and 
peaceful. 

The Bras d'Or lakes are pleasant sheets 
of water with pretty wooded shores, though 
on the whole the scenery is not remarkable. 
It is very peaceful and pleasing, however, and 
there are many lovely coves and points of 
land along the shore. And there is always 
the invigorating northern air to fill one with 
its refreshing life. 

Baddeck lies on the shores of an inlet be- 
hind a point of land that separates it from 
the Little Bras d'Or Lake. We found it the 
simple sleepy hamlet we had hoped for. Its 
164 



Baddeck 

one street was unpaved, and its shops wore 
a submissive air of having done no business 
for several generations — with one exception. 
There is one store of general merchandise of 
such modern aspect and such activity as to 
seem wholly out of place in Baddeck. 

But on the whole the village preserved the 
same Sunday-like serenity that so puzzled the 
genial author of " Baddeck and that Sort of 
Thing," since whose visit years enough have 
passed to revolutionise " American " politics 
and see the rise and fall of more than one large 
" American " city, yet there sits Baddeck on 
the shore of her Bras d'Or, just as she sat 
then, excepting that the old jail has made way 
for a new one. It was explained to us that 
the last prisoners put in the old one had dug 
holes in the wall and got out ; to further in- 
quiry our informant answered apologetically 
that he did n't think there were any prisoners 
in the jail now, but added, as though to vin- 
dicate the honour of the town, that they some- 
times had one. 

Baddeck is just as good and just as quiet 
to-day as it ever was, with the exception of 
its one flourishing store ; and that no doubt is 
165 



Down North and Up Along 

the result of " American " influence, for there 
is a large house on the point known as Red 
Head, across the water, and from a tall flag- 
staff near it floats the stars and stripes. It is 
the residence of Mr. Alexander G. Bell, the 
inventor of the Bell telephone ; and some two 
miles or more up the road to the north are 
two or three other houses from whose tall flag- 
staff's floats the emblem of our kind of freedom. 
In one lives Mr. George Kennan, not beloved 
by the Czar of Russia, and every summer a 
greater or less number of citizens from the 
United States find their way to the cool 
breezes of Baddeck. 

Yes, there is one other " improvement " at 
Baddeck, a brick custom-house and post-office 
that we at first mistook for the jail. 

There is a curious sense of disjointedness 
about Baddeck and its surroundings. The 
houses seem set around anywhere, and the Bras 
d'Or shares the general sense of confusion. 

The water-view ought to be beautiful, with 
points of land reaching into the lake, islands 
in the channel, and between the points of land 
a broad opening across the main body of water. 
But there is lacking that necessary something 
x66 



Baddeck 

we call " composition ; " things are not placed 
quite right with respect to one another, and 
the proportions are not good. Such is the im- 
pression one gets from the village itself, but 
on the higher land back of the village there 
are points of view from which Baddeck on the 
water's edge, with its diversified water-view in 
the background, is charming indeed. 

Whether Baddeck is old or young depends 
upon the point of view. In 1793 it had ten 
white inhabitants, which is ten more than Chi- 
cago had at the same time. But Chicago had 
something of an agaric nature which in little 
more than half a century has caused it to spring 
to the ungainly size of over a million, while 
Baddeck has had a slow and solid growth of 
nine hundred within a century. 

Baddeck's first inhabitants were disbanded 
soldiers, and her people now are largely com- 
posed of the Scotch who have moved to this 
part of Cape Breton. The names over her 
shop doors are Rory McLeod, Sandy McLane, 
Murdoch McPherson, or similar Scotch cog- 
nomens. The place is largely Presbyterian, 
though a little building still gathers the people 
of the Church of England under its wing. 
167 



Down North and Up Along 

The Presbyterian Church, large and barn- 
like, stands on the hill behind the town, and 
there is still observed the custom of repeating 
the services in Gaelic, — for the back-country 
people have not forgotten their mother-tongue ; 
in fact, many of the old people know no other. 

The difference between Sunday and other 
days at Baddeck is not observable in the in- 
creased stillness of the place, — that is not 
necessary even for Sunday, — but that one can 
then go to church. One can go to the Pres- 
byterian church and listen to a Gaelic service, 
which is what every stranger does. 

Sometimes an English service precedes the 
Gaelic, which makes the meeting rather long, 
but sometimes proceedings begin — and end — 
with a Gaelic prayer-meeting, which was the 
case the day we went. 

The congregation, composed mainly of 
elderly and unlettered back-country folk, con- 
tained few young people and fewer children. 
The leader, who was not unlettered and who 
had a fine voice, opened the meeting by reading 
in Gaelic. Then gaunt men rose and prayed, 
standing perfectly still and betraying no emo- 
tion in voice or by gesture. They spoke in 
i68 



Baddeck 

low mumbling tones that to us soon became a 
monotonous drone of unfamiliar sounds. 

One by one they got up and prayed and sat 
down, until we began to weary exceedingly 
from sitting still so long on the hard wooden 
seats, and were inconsistently thankful for 
the law which excludes women from also 
taking part in public services. Fortunately 
the praying was interspersed by singing, which 
caused us for the time to forget weariness 
and to become lost in wonder, if not in 
admiration. 

The leader sang metrical Psalms in a voice 
that was not without dignity and music ; the 
melody was entirely unknown to us, and at a 
curious up-slide at the end of each phrase, the 
congregation joined in a chorus difficult to de- 
scribe. There came a deep crash and burr of 
male voices, embroidered, so to speak, by the 
most astonishing and unrelated high soprano 
embellishments from the women. It was 
amazing, unexpectedly and finely barbaric, re- 
taining a strong flavour of vanished centuries 
when all the wild northern hordes struggled 
for supremacy, and when the inspiration to 
their music was the crashing of waves on the 
169 



Down North and Up Along 

wild coast, the shrieking of the tempest, and 
the cries of war. We both thought of wind 
and water surging about a rocky coast as we 
hstened, and there was also a suggestion of the 
droning of bagpipes in the male voices. 

When the services finally ended, the collec- 
tion was taken, and it amounted to only a few 
large copper pennies. 

There were Indians at Baddeck. They 
come in the summer as to a watering-place, for 
change and recreation and to glean an occa- 
sional penny from the " American " visitors, 
and to sell baskets of their own manufacture 
to whoever is in need of baskets. Their en- 
campment was on a steep hillside on the edge 
of the village. It consisted of half-a-dozen 
wigwams covered with birch-bark and shaped 
very much like the pointed firs that surrounded 
them. 

Thin columns of blue smoke were rising 
from two or three camp-fires one morning as 
we drew near, and we saw an iron pot hung 
over each fire by a cord from two sticks set up 
cross-wise. Here was genuine Indian at last! 
but not unmarred by contact with the dominant 
race, after all, — for they were unbecomingly 
170 



Baddeck 

clad in the cast-off" clothing of their white 
neighbours. 

The romance of Micmac Indian life is very 
greatly enhanced by distance. They live al- 
most as simply as wild animals, but they are 
not nearly as clean. Why is it one never 
sees a dirty squirrel and never a clean Indian ? 
Unless, indeed, both have the misfortune to 
be captured by civilised man, when the method 
of their lives may become reversed, and the 
squirrel through vile captivity grows dirty, 
while the Indian becomes clean through en- 
forced scrubbing by the Government. 

There was a white child in this camp, a little 
girl of seven or eight, and the wildest-eyed child 
we ever had seen. She was dirty like the rest, 
and at our approach fled as though the bad 
spirit were after her. We saw her later caress- 
ing a fat squaw, who vigorously elbowed her 
away. We learned her story, which was not a 
pleasant one, her own mother having given her 
to the Indians. Poor baby, with her bright yel- 
low hair, and her skin gleaming white in spite of 
the dirt, what is to be her fate, brought up like 
a little animal in the midst of a race whose 
every impulse is opposed to her own ? 
171 



Down North and Up Along 

Besides a number of Indian children, there 
were little dogs about the camp, as miserable- 
looking as starved little dogs could be, and 
there was a kitten with a woolly coat like a 
sheep. It was a desperate-looking kitten, and 
who can tell whether its woolly coat was due 
to the vermin that certainly infested it, or to 
some un-catlike, and ghouHsh foreknowledge 
such as is said to be possessed by potato-skins, 
corn-husks, and gophers, of a hard winter which 
must be prepared for. 

As we receded from the camp, the pointed 
wigwams shining white and tawny with their 
covering of birch-bark, the blue lines of smoke 
wavering up to the sky, the moving forms 
of children, made a picture pleasant to look 
upon. 



172 



XIII 
ENGLISHTOWN 

WE did not go to Baddeck wholly 
for Baddeck's sake, but as well to 
make it a starting-point for the 
plateau to the north which we meant 
to traverse, roads permitting, all the way to the 
bold headland that fronts the icy sea and ends 
the land in this direction. 

The people there are Scotch Highlanders of 
good repute, they having succeeded an older 
population of bad fame and piratical habits. 

Cape North and its Highland fisher-folk had 
been recommended to us at Parrsboro by Mr. 
Gibbons, a unique and beautiful character, pas- 
tor of the Church of England, and lovingly 
called by his people " Parson Gibbons." He 
is the only person of Esquimaux blood, so far 
as we know, who has made a name for himself. 
He wore an expression of great sweetness 
and earnestness, and was a man of so much 
education and culture that it was a pleasure to 
listen to him. His indomitable courage had 
173 



Down North and Up Along 

enabled him to surmount all obstacles and take 
his place in the field of work he had chosen 
and in the society that his education had fitted 
him fi^r. 

He had ministered for a number of years to 
the people of Cape North, as no one had done 
before, and as no one has done since. He 
loved them, that we could see, as in his sym- 
pathetic way he told us of them, of their hard 
lives, their idiosyncrasies and their virtues, and 
although he had a quick sense of humour there 
was ever love shining back of his laughter. 
He mapped out the route for us from Bad- 
deck to the extreme end of Cape North, and 
told us where and with whom to stay along the 
road. 

At Baddeck, we learned much of Parson 
Gibbons' work, how he had gone once a month 
the whole length of Cape North, often walking 
the distance of one hundred miles over moun- 
tains and through swamps. More than once 
he had stumbled into a friend's house, on his 
return from the north, quite exhausted and 
with blood-stained shoes. 

No other name is so well known and so 
loved on that rude coast, as we were soon to 
174 



Englishtown 

learn, for even the faces of the children that had 
been born since he left lighted when we spoke 
of him. His memory is handed down to the 
younger generations ; and all, old and young 
alike, when we were there, fondly believed that 
he would some day return to them. But that 
he will not do, for since this book was begun 
the brave and gentle spirit has passed from its 
mortal toil. His death was the result of in- 
juries received when stopping a pair of runa- 
way horses, saving the lives of those in the 
carriage. 

At one end of the village of Baddeck stands 
a little church of unique appearance, which is 
one of eight in different parts of Cape Breton 
and Nova Scotia which the great courage and 
perseverance of Parson Gibbons had built, 
some of them in places where another would 
have seen no possibility of erecting so much as 
a shed. 

We were obliged to remain in Baddeck for 
several days, partly on account of the weather, 
and partly to make the necessary preparations 
for the peculiar journey we had undertaken. 

One cannot start into the wilderness without 
forethought, and we had received such contra- 
175 



Down North and Up Along 

dictory information concerning the resources 
for travellers " down north " that we determined 
to take with us the necessaries of life. In 
other words, we were to become a pair of 
gypsies for a couple of weeks. 

Of course we had to drive, and for this a 
horse and waggon were necessary. A waggon 
in which one must take a long journey is good 
or bad according to the nature of its seat. 
Only those who have tried know how few 
vehicles have seats that are not a mortification 
to the spirit of man after he has sat upon them 
for three consecutive hours. Now, to select a 
waggon solely for the comfort of its seat may 
produce peculiar results. It did in our case. 
We desired to present as respectable an ap- 
pearance upon this somewhat Quixotic journey 
as circumstances permitted, but circumstances 
did not permit of anything better than a small 
and topless vehicle very much the worse for 
wear, and with what paint still remained worn 
to a dull and ashy gray. But it was strong 
and had a comfortable seat. 

It had to be built up in the back to accom- 
modate our load ; and as the addition was made 
with new boards which there was no time to 

176 



Englishtown 

have painted, the result was not quite what we 
should have been willing to exhibit to some of 
our — happily distant — friends and relatives. 
But the people of Cape Breton are not criti- 
cal ; and as a good many of them do their 
own walking, our outfit was regarded beyond 
the town with envy and as an indication of very 
great wealth and pride. 

Quite as important as the waggon was the 
horse; and Mr. A., genial landlord of the new 
Bras d'Or hotel, introduced Dan to us as the 
one horse in all Baddeck or in all the world 
suited to our needs. 

Dan was a rather small chestnut with a white 
star in his forehead ; he had a straight neck, a 
tender mouth, a somewhat mincing gait, and 
he was a little stiff in the legs upon first starting 
out. He hated to back and he had a nervous 
fear of the whip. But to offset all this he had 
a large kind eye and as true a heart as ever 
beat in the breast of a horse. 

Appearances were certainly against the dear 

old fellow, and we remember with regret that we 

rejected him after a short trial drive. But Mr. 

A. assured us so impressively that Dan was 

willing to cross ferries that fortunately for us 
w 177 



Down North and Up Along 

we finally took him, though we did it under 
protest. We could not then understand why 
willingness to cross ferries should count so 
mightily in his favour. Our very narrow- 
minded idea of a " ferry," based upon those by 
which one enters or leaves New York City, was 
to become broadened to an extent we did not 
dream of then. 

" Down North " is applicable to any journey 
northward from the southernmost point of 
Nova Scotia. " Up along," like the same 
term on Cape Cod, is used of travelling along 
the edge of the land, that long strip by the 
sea which in both Cape Cod and Cape North 
is the portion most generally inhabited. So 
when we left Baddeck — or perhaps better, left 
Englishtown — we might technically be said to 
be going " up along." 

A clear, cool morning dawned about the 
middle of September. The waggon was ready ; 
and Dan, shining from a most unusual polishing, 
the last grooming he was likely to get until he 
returned to his own stable, with a strong 
harness on his back and new shoes on his feet, 
waited our pleasure. 

Into the back of the waggon were packed a 
178 



Englishtown 

few necessary personal effects and also sundry 
culinary articles of iron or tin and a quantity of 
provisions. A white canvas cloth, attached to 
the seat, was drawn tightly over the load at the 
back, steadying and holding it in place, and 
incidentally giving it the effect of a peddler's 
pack or an emigrant's outfit. Mr. A. gener- 
ously tied his own fishing-rod to the back of 
the seat with our umbrellas, over which were 
thrown the bright new Halifax rugs that must 
have felt a little indignant at the figure they 
were made to cut. M.'s sketching materials 
stood against the dashboard, and under our 
feet, to her dismay, was a tin can of worms 
which the stable boy at the last moment con- 
tributed for bait, also a wrench, and a bottle 
of oil to grease the wheels. 

As there was no room for it inside, Mr. A. 
had dexterously with a long rope tied a bushel 
of oats and " cut feed " in a bag to the back 
springs, not improving their action thereby, but 
adding materially to the general emigrant effect. 

We finally started, moving down the main 
street of Baddeck with what dignity circum- 
stances permitted, while the Sandys, Rorys, and 
Murdochs stood at the doors of the moribund 
179 



Down North and Up Along 

shops with their hands in their pockets, and 
looked on, speechless, smileless, and respectful. 

In a few moments we were out of town, 
facing expectantly toward Cape North, that 
mysterious headland a hundred miles away, the 
road to which was said to be wild and lonely, 
obstructed by mountains and marshes, and 
traversed by an occasional Highlander. Be- 
tween us and these perils we had only Dan, 
with his new shoes, his strong harness, and his 
kind eye. 

We jogged along the road to the northwest, 
following an arm of the Bras d'Or that makes 
up there and is known as Baddeck Bay. 

We passed the cottages of the stars and stripes 
and bade adieu to them as though they had been 
our friends. 

Miles of wild fir forest succeeded to the blue 
shine of the bay. Moss bearded the trees and 
carpeted the banks ; pretty snowberry vines 
strayed over the moss. Innumerable bridges 
intercepted our way, and they were all out of 
repair. Under some scurried brooks, while 
others seemed their own excuse for being, as 
there was no water under them and no sign 
that there ever had been. 
I So 



Knglishtown 

It was at these bridges that Dan's virtues as 
a highland traveller began to shine forth. If 
his foot went through a hole, he pulled it out 
and like a philosopher scorned to notice trifles. 
He had a way of smelling of suspicious bridges ; 
and if they exhaled no odour of security, he 
gathered himself together and jumped over 
them, the waggon and its occupants following, 
not as they would, but as they must. 

Besides the many little bridges that Dan could 
jump, there were longer ones that no horse could 
have jumped, and beneath them and along the 
side of the road through reaches of fir-trees 
dashed and tumbled and glided the wildest, 
loveliest brooks we ever had dreamed of. 

We went slowly along, enjoying the lovely 
road and the bewitching brooks until we found 
ourselves hungry. Then we stopped and had 
our first gypsy meal by the roadside. We 
built a fire of dry twigs on a pile of stones near 
a brook in a meadow where the fence was down, 
and felt very wild and gypsy-like. True gyp- 
sies would have done better, however. The 
smoke blew all ways at once, and the kettle 
insisted upon lying upon its side and pouring 
the water into the fire. 
iSz 



Down North and Up Along 

We took Dan from the waggon ; and since we 
had forgotten to bring a halter we led him into 
the field and bribed him by a pile of oats and 
cut feed to stand still. He stood and ate the 
feed, the grass beneath it, and the earth beneath 
that, while we returned to the unequal contest 
with the fire and forgot all about him until a 
peculiar shuffling noise brought our heads out 
of the smoke and fastened our startled gaze 
upon him, not as we had left him, but upside- 
down, his new shoes sparkling to the sky and 
his harness writhing about him. 

He was without doubt the happiest horse in 
Cape Breton at that moment, but at our indig- 
nant approach he righted himself in haste and 
looked deprecatingly at us out of his large kind 
eyes. 

Dinner was forgotten in the puzzling occu- 
pation of getting him to rights, and he was 
bribed with another supply of feed to stand up. 
It was the middle of the afternoon before we 
sat down to our hard-earned meal, and all we 
succeeded in cooking after a long and bitter 
fight with our first camp fire was a pot of coffee. 
Still, it paid, as any gypsy will understand. 

Having attached Dan to the waggon with an 
182 



Englishtown 

optimistic trust in the goodness of misplaced 
straps, we went on through another stretch of 
fir woods smothered in brittle sage-green moss. 
Then a clearing appeared, and we passed some- 
body's potato patch where large crows were 
pompously stealing potatoes. They cawed in 
loud tones as we drew nearer, and went on 
coolly digging up their neighbour's tubers. 
They poked their stout beaks into a hill and 
hauled forth a potato with an unerring aim 
that suggested previous practice. 

Besides the crows the woods were full of 
robins. Such wild robins ! They were in 
flocks and screamed at us and showed none of 
the amiable characteristics of the red-breasts of 
civilisation. 

There were squirrels along the lovely high- 
way, — tiny fellows with rusty red coats and 
bushy tails, that scolded us roundly, though we 
were not conscious of deserving it. 

We climbed a long, circuitous, fir-covered, 
brook-bordered hill, at the top of which a 
noble view of St. Anne's Bay burst upon us. 
From a calm sheet of blue water, mountains 
rose in brooding beauty, stretching away and 
away along the sea-coast to the distant blue 
183 



Down North and Up Along 

headland which was far-famed Smoky, or Cape 
Enfume, as the French called it long ago, be- 
cause of the crown of mist it usually wears. 

The contour of the mountains opposite 
Englishtown is peculiarly beautiful, the lines 
of the spurs as they overlap each other are 
fine, and the ever-changing yet eternal moun- 
tains of beauty are repeated in reflections on 
the water below. 

We know no lovelier spot than English- 
town, lying on the lower swells of elevations 
that rise almost as high as do the mountains 
across the bay. 

Englishtown is enveloped in a mantle of 
romance besides that of her beautiful moun- 
tains and bay. One is astonished to know 
how old the place is, and that St. Anne Bay 
was an important and stirring fishing port 
contended for by both French and English 
when New York City was still a quiet Dutch 
burg. Indeed, the first settlements there ante- 
date the founding of Port Royal. But St. Anne's 
history is full of vicissitudes; and though re- 
peatedly settled by the French and English 
alternately, no permanent village of any size 
or importance has as yet been founded there. 
184 




'■J 




u 



1 ') 



. \ n Ail 



Englishiown 

In 1597 the English ship " Chancewell " came 
to grief in the usually safe harbour and was 
wickedly pillaged by the French fishermen 
settled along the coast. Captain Leigh, com- 
mander of the " Chancewell," tells us that 
" there came aboard many shallops with great 
store of Frenchmen, who robbed and spoiled all 
they could lay their hands on, pillaging the poor 
men even to their very shirts, and using them 
in savage manner ; whereas they should rather 
as Christians have aided them in their distress." 

In 1629, two armed ships of France, the 
" Great St. Andrew " and the " Marguerite," 
occupied the harbour, and their crews, aided 
by their English prisoners, built a fort to com- 
mand the entrance. This fort was armed with 
eight cannon, 1800 pounds of powder, pikes, 
and muskets, and was garrisoned by forty 
men. The arms of France and of Cardinal 
Richelieu were raised over its walls, and a 
chapel was erected. But before the close of 
the winter, disaster thinned the ranks of the 
garrison ; more than a third of the troops died 
of scurvy, and to add to the confusion the 
commandant assassinated his lieutenant on the 
parade-ground. Later, an Indian mission was 
185 



Down North a?id Up Along 

founded here by French Jesuits, but prosper- 
ity did not attend these efforts, and soon both 
garrison and mission were removed. 

In a French book, written by Thomas 
Pinchon and translated into English in 1760, 
we get a very good description of St. Anne, 
or Port Dauphin, as it was then called. 

" Port Dauphin is a very fine harbour, two leagues 
in circumference. It is almost entirely shut up by a 
neck of land, which leaves only a passage for one 
vessel at a time. The ships can hardly perceive the 
least motion of the winds, the grounds, that surround 
it on all sides, being of so great a height ; besides, 
they approach the shore as near as they please with- 
out danger, and the harbour is capable of admitting 
vessels even of four hundred ton. The bay is capa- 
cious enough to contain a thousand [vessels]. Be- 
fore it is the great Bay of St. Anne, covered to the 
southeast by the two islands of Ciboux and Cape 
Dauphin. . . . The strand of Port Dauphin is of 
greater extent than that of any other harbour in the 
island ; and notwithstanding that there is plenty of 
codfish, yet this is not the only advantage of the 
place ; the neighbourhood of Labrador [the Bras d'Or 
lakes were then called Labrador] and Niganiche [Ingo- 
nish] renders it easy for the inhabitants and the sav- 
ages to assemble upon necessary occasions. 

186 



Englishtown 



" The vessels employed in the fishery at Niganiche 
are obliged by the king's ordinance to retire to Port 
Dauphin toward the fifteenth of August, because of 
the storms that rage in that season. When they 
have got into those harbours, they expose the cod- 
fish on shore, where nature seems to have made a 
bed for that purpose. Sometimes you see a hundred 
and fifty boats employed in this business." 

It seems that the French were for some 
time undecided as to whether the citadel of 
Louisburg should be built at Port Dauphin 
or on " English Harbour," as Louisburg har- 
bour was then called. Port Dauphin was 
more impregnable but less convenient, and 
was finally rejected. 

St. Anne Bay is another inlet like those two 
long " arms of gold " that give entrance to the 
Bras d'Or lakes. It lies nearly parallel with 
them, but does not reach more than ten or 
twelve miles into the land, because of the 
watershed which keeps it from forming an- 
other arm to the Bras d'Or lakes. 

It was an easy matter to sail from the east- 
ern harbours around to St. Anne ; and when 
there was any fighting going on, St. Anne 
seems never to have been left out. 
187 



Down North and Up Along 

In 1754 the English came around in one of 
their war-ships, a part of Commodore War- 
ren's fleet then blockading Louisburg, and 
destroyed all the French settlements on St. 
Anne's Bay. 

Toward the end of the eighteenth century 
there was a remarkable influx of Scotch High- 
landers to Cape Breton and at the beginning of 
the nineteenth century ship-load after ship-load 
was landed on that island. It is estimated that 
between 1802 and 1828 some 25,000 of these 
people poured into Cape Breton. They were 
turned out of their homes in Scotland to make 
way for sheep-raising, that having been found 
more profitable than the rents of the miserable 
tenantry. The refugees sought the new high- 
lands of a more friendly world, where landlords 
were not, and thus St. Anne and the whole of 
Cape North came to have its present indus- 
trious and temperate population. 

On the end of the narrow spit of land that 
closes the harbour to the storms and allows only 
one ship at a time to pass, a light-house now 
stands, and another shines over the sea from 
one of the Ciboux Islands. 

Englishtown, too, is the proud birthplace of 
188 



Eng/ishiown 

a great man, for here first saw the light Angus 
McCaskell, the giant, concerning whose hfe we 
know only what has been told us by the genial 
and learned author of " Baddeck and that Sort 
of Thing," who ends his description of the 
great man with the exclamation, " Alas ! he has 
passed away, leaving little influence except a 
good example of growth, and a grave which is 
a new promontory on that ragged coast swept 
by the winds of the untamed Atlantic." 

We regret to say we did not visit his grave 
nor his shoes nor sit in his chair ; we were so 
overcome by the unexpected beauty of bay and 
mountain that we forgot all about the storied 
dead until it was too late and we had crossed 
Torquil McLane's ferry not to return. 

We entered Englishtown in the same lei- 
surely way we had approached it. It consists 
of half a dozen or more houses placed not too 
close together along the road, and we were in 
search of a " long low house with a black roof 
standing on a hillside." Here lived Sandy 
McLeod and his family, and here we hoped to 
spend the night. Sandy himself was not at 
home, nor yet Mrs. Sandy, but bonnie Annie 
was. To let us in, she opened the bars that 



Down North and Up Along 

closed the gateway to the meadow at the 
farther end of which the house stood, and 
undertook the offices of hospitality in her 
mother's absence. Her mother had gone on 
the mountains for blueberries, which was good 
news to hungry travellers. 

As there was no one at home but Annie and 
a little boy, we, with a confidence partly as- 
sumed, undertook the deliverance of Dan. 

A " collar and hames " is a remarkable in- 
vention not commonly used on a single horse 
excepting for heavy work, but it formed a part 
of our strong harness. The hames is within 
the comprehension of the average intellect, for 
it unbuckles and comes off, but the collar does 
not ; it does not open, and is smaller than the 
horse's head by any ordinary method of meas- 
urements. We had exhausted mathematics 
and the patient Dan's forbearance ; the sunset 
flamed and waned unseen before the inspiration 
seized us to turn it around, then, presto ! it 
was the shape of his head, and off it came. 

Dan's tortured ears and head being finally 
released, to our infinite relief and his, we min- 
istered to his comfort as well as we could in 
the gathering darkness, then went to the house, 
190 



Englishtown 

whence proceeded an appetising odour of cook- 
ing clams. This was a sorrowful delusion, 
however, as it proceeded from a kettle of " rock- 
weed " Annie was boiling for the pigs. 

The mother came with a pail of fresh blue- 
berries and bade us a cordial welcome, and we 
made a hearty supper of bread and milk, and 
blueberries sweetened with brown sugar, our 
appetites quickened by the day out of doors 
and the odour of steaming rockweed. 

After a night of such sleep as comes only to 
those who have spent the day in the open air, 
we wakened to a morning of splendour. 

A neighbour " tackled " Dan for us, making 
no comments upon the state of his rigging, un- 
tangling and putting all to rights and making 
our stanch little craft again seaworthy, with the 
deftness of a sailor. 

This handy son of Neptune also mended 
the holes the rope had worn in the feed-bag, 
for a fine stream of Dan's precious provender 
issued from each of a number of holes at every 
motion, and we know not how far we had left 
this sign of our passing along the lonely road. 

Meantime we talked to the pretty boy who 
is heir to the McLeod estate, and learned that 
191 



Down North and Up Along 

he was six, that he did not go to school, 
though he earnestly assured us in the dialect 
of Cape North, " If I will be seven, then I 
might go," meaning that when he had attained 
that mature age he would go. 



192 



XIV 
FRENCH RIVER 

TORQUIL McLANE'S ferry is the 
notable instrument by means of which 
the traveller can find his way out of 
Englishtown to the north. 
Englishtown lies opposite the narrowest part 
of St. Anne, which here may be about a mile 
wide, but that providential tongue of land 
must not be forgotten which separates the 
inner harbour from the outer bay, leaving only 
" a passage for one vessel at a time," and 
making of it a safe refuge in time of war. 

Although not at present of military impor- 
tance, the tongue of land still answers a very 
good purpose in shortening the labours of 
Torquil, the ferryman, who Is a man of note 
all over Cape North, and, for that matter, 
much farther. For whoever writes an article 
or even a letter about this part of the country, 
never fails to adorn the same with the pictur- 
esque name of Torquil McLane, the English- 
town ferryman. 

13 193 



Down North and Up Along 

Torquil must be pronounced " turkle," and 
Cape Breton on the spot must be called Cape 
" Britton." It is supposed by some that the 
island got its name from the Basque sailors who 
came to these shores from Cape Breton near 
Bayonne, in very early times. Be that as it 
may, the Basque sailors are no longer there to 
see justice done their mother tongue, and Cape 
" Britton " it is in the mouths of these former 
subjects of the British Empire. 

Torquil McLane's ferry was quite as pic- 
turesque as Torquil himself, and resembled 
nothing so little as our narrow-minded ideas 
of a " ferry." To see it was to understand 
and sympathise with Mr. A.'s concern that we 
should have a horse willing to cross it ! 

It had no landing whatever other than the 
pebbly beach provided by nature. The ferry- 
boat resembled a retired dory, grown broad 
and flat-bottomed with increase of years. We 
reached this promising form of transportation 
by pitching down a stony embankment upon 
a stony beach. 

Torquil was waiting for us, for had he not 
seen us enter town the night before, and did 
he not hope and trust that we should be cross- 
194 



French River 



ing his ferry in the morning ? He was a tall, 
spare Highlander, and he surveyed us with his 
shrewd Scotch eyes, and in a deep voice in- 
quired, after the manner of his people, where 
we came from, where we were going, and what 
our names were. 

We answered and looked at each other in 
consternation, for while we might get aboard 
the high-sided boat, rocking in the water, what 
of Dan ? Could he and would he do this 
thing ? We did not believe that he could or 
would. 

While Torquil was taking the horse from the 
waggon, his daughter, aged eighteen, strongly 
built and rosy-cheeked, appeared upon the 
scene. She had come to help her father row 
us over the ferry, and was accompanied by a 
little boy and a solemn-faced baby. 

Torquil and his buxom daughter laid hold 
upon the waggon and pulled it out into the 
water and aboard the boat, that vehicle going 
through the most alarming contortions mean- 
time. Then it was Dan's turn, and we watched 
with bated breath as he waded out. 

" Get in there ! " said Torquil the ferryman 
— and Dan got in ! It was a beautiful sight. 
195 



Down North and Up Along 

He pawed about with his front feet until he 
got them over the side and in the boat, and 
repeated the operation with his hind ones 
until he was all in. Could he have known the 
feelings with which we regarded him upon that 
occasion, he would have been a proud and 
happy horse. 

As it was, he was no sooner in than he wished 
himself out again, and it became necessary 
for one of us to stand on a seat and keep 
him from walking overboard, while Torquil 
and his daughter pushed the boat from shore 
and turned it toward the other side of the 
harbour. 

The baby was stowed for safe-keeping under 
the seat in the bow, whence it peered out curi- 
ous but silent — as became a Scotch baby. 
The little boy pulled at his father's oar until 
his face was crimson, and the strong-armed 
daughter kept stroke with her father. Thus 
we passed the perils of the sea. 

As soon as the boat grated on the pebbles 
of the opposite shore, Dan scrambled over- 
board and Torquil harnessed him to the waggon. 
We paid the ferryman his fee and watched the 
clumsy craft go back across the mouth of the 
196 



French River 



harbour bearing the far-famed ferryman, his 
strong daughter, his crimson-faced son, and his 
silent baby. 

This long narrow reef is a curious object 
which, seen at a distance, looks more like an 
artificial breakwater than a work of nature. It 
is formed of large light-coloured cobblestones, 
and the road over them was almost invisible, so 
slight is the impression made upon them by 
wheels and footsteps. Quantities of gulls flew 
screaming about us, and upon the bar strange- 
looking conifers spread themselves out. Broad 
at the base, they were only three or four feet 
high, grotesque caricatures of the elegantly 
proportioned spruces and firs of the moun- 
tains. Luxuriant patches of Herb Robert 
with red-tinged leaves and deep pink blossoms 
brightened the austere bar, and the Mertensia 
Maritima was also in bloom, though we saw but 
one plant of it. It is as scarce as it is charm- 
ing and loves to adorn just such stony places. 
Unfortunately for it, its pretty patches of blue- 
gray leaves set on long stems radiating from 
a centre are very noticeable among the stones, 
even if it were not for the showy flowers, rose- 
red in the bud, violet as they unfold, and finally 
197 



Down North and Up Along 

when fully open a deep pure blue, and they 
fall victims to the passer-by. 

We are distressed to recall that we took this 
last plant, it may be thereby exterminating the 
race, so far as that particular cobblestone bar 
is concerned. Upon realising this, we wished 
it back in its place among the stones, ripening 
its seeds. But it was too late. The delicate 
roots could not be returned to the crevices 
whence they had been torn, and we regarded 
the quaint and pretty blossoms that lay before 
us with a feeling of guilt which it is to be 
hoped is the fate of all vandals. 

Patches of fragrant juniper covered with 
clusters of dusky blue berries were scattered 
over the bar, and the yellow August flower 
nodded merrily to us from its hard lot among 
the stones. 

The August flower, as it is here called, grows 
all over Nova Scotia. It is a yellow composite, 
smaller and more delicate than a dandelion, and 
the most joyous of weeds, standing anywhere 
and everywhere that it can find room for a seed 
to sprout, and making the roadsides and stony 
places bright. 

Once over the bar, the road lay along the 
198 



French River 

narrow stretch of level country between moun- 
tains and sea. The houses by common con- 
sent in this whole country keep as far away 
from the road and from one another as they 
can. We could see them set far back toward 
the mountains and protected from the dangers 
of the highway by broad fields which lay in 
front of them. 

For some distance the road winds its charm- 
ing way in full view of the surrounding moun- 
tains and sea, and then it turns inland and 
crosses the steep-banked Barasois River over a 
new iron bridge. 

Cape Breton is a remarkable place for brooks. 
One feels obliged to keep on saying so, for 
they keep on appearing, the most friendly and 
joyous brooks ; sliding without a ripple over 
mossy rocks, leaping wildly down the faces of 
cliffs, disappearing, reappearing, murmuring, 
smiling, roaring, they were our constant com- 
panions, delightful beyond all reason. They are 
brown brooks as a rule, a deep golden brown, 
though sometimes they are emerald green. 

Indian Brook, which we crossed soon after 
the Barasois, almost anywhere else would be 
called a river. It has a broad stony beach 
199 



Down North and Up Along 

which tells a tale of flood when the glen it 
traverses between the mountains was filled by 
a wild torrent, for mountains of great beauty- 
stand about Indian Brook. It is one of the 
loveliest spots in Cape North, as the people call 
all this northern peninsula. The mountains 
that enclose the glen are like those at English- 
town, while to the northward are seen the splen- 
did headlands that stop at the sea, projecting 
their imposing individual forms in dark masses 
against the sky. The mouth of Indian Brook 
traverses a wide flat expanse that in the autumn 
is brilliant with the glorious colouring that 
distinguishes the salt marsh. 

Having secured a jar of milk and half a loaf 
of sour bread from a wayside farmhouse set 
well back from the road on a hill, when the 
time came we had dinner by a brook-side. 
Cape Breton is noted and justly so for sour 
bread, but there are exceptions. 

Cape Breton brooks might have been made 
for camping purposes, so admirably are they 
adapted to it, and the one we chose that day 
was perfect. It had a broad bed of dry stones 
with a clear cold stream in the middle and 
bushes and trees along grassy banks. 



French River 



On the dry stones, partly protected by a clump 
of trees, the camp-fire burned cheerily, and 
we had a royal dinner, leaving the Cape Breton 
bread to the discussion of the birds. Dan 
had several sheaves of fresh-cut oats, purchased 
along the way, and we were all happy. 

There was not a house nor a human being 
in sight, only the sky, the cold brook, the 
splendid air, and the trees and birds for com- 
pany. Had we known as much then as we 
did later, we might have added brook trout 
to our feast. 

We lingered long, lying on the warm grass 
in the sun while Dan cropped about the bushes. 
The good fellow endeared himself to us quite 
as much through his faults as his virtues, — for 
his weaknesses were human like our own. 

He loved the midday rest. He knew when 
the time came, and sometimes even selected the 
spot. When he had had a pleasant time of long 
duration, he showed his appreciation by good- 
naturedly putting himself between the shafts, 
which it is the custom in Cape Breton to hold 
up above the horse ; but his opinion of an in- 
sufficient play spell he expressed by meanly 
stepping in sideways so that the shafts lay 



Down North and Up Along 

across his back. This he would do time and 
again, resisting the combined efforts of the two 
of us to get him in straight until he considered 
us sufficiently punished, when he would turn 
around of his own accord. 

Wherever we were, the same forms went 
flitting ahead of us, the same uncertain colour 
and quick motion, only the white feathers on 
the sides of their outspread tails betraying the 
juncos and their sociable tsip, tsip, tsip^ telling 
us we were not alone in the wilderness. 

The approach to Sandy McDonald's is over 
undulating fields ; it is not on the highway, no 
house in Cape Breton is, and it is not in view 
from the highway. One goes there on faith. 
The track worn through the fields meanders 
along toward the sea, and one meanders along 
over it, with no sign of what one is seeking 
until upon climbing a hill the house is suddenly 
in view, standing on the very edge of the sea 
bluflF and flanked by a small barn and the 
roofs of a group of buildings that scarcely rise 
above the bank. 

The house stands alone on that wild coast 
with the restless northern sea reaching out to 
the " Grand Banks," and the nearer waters 
202 



French River 



yielding great store of codfish to Sandy and 
his fishermen. 

There is a wide and slightly rolling meadow 
to be crossed before the house is reached, and 
this meadow, when we passed that way, had 
been given a recent top-dressing of fish-heads, 
which sent forth a mighty odour. As the 
house was approached, however, the fish-heads 
were left behind, and the strong, clean winds 
from the sea drove the stench landward, leaving 
about the McDonald habitation only its legiti- 
mate odours of fresh and drying fish. 

Fish is the keynote to life at Sandy Mc- 
Donald's. There is fish everywhere about the 
place ; indeed, man himself seems a subordi- 
nate work of nature, created for the purpose 
of catching and curing fish. 

The house stands on the top of the bluff 
and down below are fish in all stages of prepa- 
ration. Down there, too, are the buildings 
where the fish are salted and laid in piles to 
await their turn on the flakes. 

These dark-hued old fish-huts, with their 

briny odours and weather-worn aspect, give one 

the feeling that they have grown there like 

barnacles on the bank. They stand with their 

203 



Down North and Up Along 

backs against the bluff, and about them are 
large frames roofed with poles, the flakes ap- 
propriate to the scale upon which fishing is 
here carried on. 

Standing about are large black iron pots with 
signs of extinct fires still visible under them; 
and there are vats of livers ; and everywhere 
fish are lying or hanging, the cod having the 
place of honour on the flakes, the queer-look- 
ing remnants of dogfish or skates spread out 
on the beach or hung up anywhere. 

The huddle of huts and great flakes, the 
boats drawn up on the shore, are all of the 
same weather-worn hue ; and, seen against 
the sombre, treeless bank with the boundless 
expanse of the northern sea in front, the place 
has a wild and remote aspect at once unique 
and impressive. 

In the narrow path that leads along between 
fish huts and flakes we saw a small and shaggy- 
haired ox with a yoke about his neck attached 
to a sled that would have graced an ethnologi- 
cal museum, for if it was not the work of 
primitive man, it at least was the primitive 
work of man, which amounts to about the same 
thing, so far as looks are concerned. 
204 



French River 



And Sandy McDonald owns the whole of 
this uncommon place. House, barn, store, 
for there is a store well stocked with fisher- 
men's needs next the house, fish-huts, fish- 
flakes, shaggy ox, and primitive-looking sled, — 
all are his. 

When we got there in the afternoon the 
day's work was done, the fishermen were scat- 
tered, and there only remained the evidences of 
their recent presence in the fresh fish that were 
lying about and the long, lank, newly hung 
strips of dogfish drying for the horses and 
cows. They told us that a horse fed on dried 
dogfish presently acquires a glossiness beauti- 
ful to behold. 

French River runs over a stony bed to the 
north of the house. It winds its shallow way 
to the sea untroubled by the fact that the 
McDonald household has to descend the bank 
to its level and carry back every drop of water 
the family uses. 

This is the romantic but extremely incon- 
venient habit throughout Cape Breton. Each 
house is built as near as possible to its own 
river or brook or spring. If the land in the 
immediate neighbourhood of water is not suit- 
205 



Down North and Up Along 

able for building purposes, so much the worse 
for the family. The little meandering paths 
from house to spring are very pretty in the 
summer-time, and one is willing not to know 
them in the winter. 

There must be people somewhere near Sandy 
McDonald's, for we saw little children on the 
bank above us as we walked among the remains 
of fish that afternoon of our arrival. The little 
creatures seemed to belong to some untamed 
branch of humanity, they were so wild in looks 
and behaviour, fleeing like wind-blown elves if 
we so much as looked in their direction. They 
finally flung themselves down on the top of the 
bank and peered down at us, only their heads 
visible, while they would occasionally spring 
up like a row of jumping-jacks, tossing their 
arms and gesticulating wildly. It was a strange 
place as the sunset glow warmed the sky and 
the great northern sea darkened, with the 
weather-worn fish-huts, the great flakes, the 
strong odour of drying fish about us, and 
above us the grim bank with the forms of the 
strangely behaving children outlined against 
the red sky. 

The McDonald bread is not sour, and pretty 
206 



French River 

Mrs. McDonald prepared supper, of which 
we partook with the family, consisting of Mr. 
and Mrs. McDonald and their little boy, and 
Mr. McDonald asked a Gaelic blessing over 
the meal. 

In the morning we saw the real life of this 
remote fishing-station. By the time we had 
eaten breakfast, the dories were already coming 
back with the result of the day's catch. 

Hours before we were awake the fishermen 
had pulled out to sea, and there in the darkness 
had drawn in the cods, the skates, and the dog- 
fish. We watched the boats come in, bobbing 
over the water and all making for the same 
point, — the shore where we stood. When a 
boat neared the strand, it was headed at right 
angles to the breakers and driven hard ashore. 
As it grated on the pebbles the men jumped 
overboard; one of them threw one of the enor- 
mous oars under the bow for a roller, and all 
hands laying hold upon either side of the boat 
with shouting and laughter drew it, load and 
all, up on the pebbly beach beyond high tide. 

The heavy boats were laid side by side so 
close together as almost to touch. It was quite 
exciting and very picturesque, for the men were 
207 



Down North and Up Along 

clad in tarpaulins and their speech was Gaelic. 
As soon as a boat was landed, all gathered 
about it to examine and comment upon its 
contents ; then the tables were set up and the 
work of "dressing down" began. 

The tables were the colour of the fish-huts, 
the flakes, and the sombre bank ; they had criss- 
cross legs nailed to either end, and looked 
soggy on top, where the juices of innumerable 
fish had been spilled upon them. 

The cod were mostly small the morning we 
saw them. We had not thought well of the 
personal appearance of the cod heretofore, but 
many of these were of a brilliant metallic brown 
played over by shades of red and green. 

Besides the cod there were quantities of dog- 
fish, more dogfish than cod indeed ; and every 
boat had at least one, and some of them several 
enormous skates. Their semi-lunar mouths 
were placed underneath the front of the kite- 
shaped body and were horribly paved with blunt 
and rounded teeth that fastened unyieldingly 
upon anything that came within reach. 

In each boat was store of squid for bait. 
There are no queerer creatures than these, 
soft, long, and cylindrical, reddish yellow in 
208 




u 



French River 



colour, with long tentacles growing out from 
the head end. The head end is spotted and 
speckled with bright colours, and up and down 
run lines of changing and iridescent hues, as 
though the blood in their transparent bodies 
were made of the essence of rainbows. Their 
conduct is as queer as their appearance, for 
when they are first pulled out of the water 
they squirt ink upon their captors, and that 
they are pulled out at all is entirely their own 
fault, for the fisherman but drops overboard a 
cylindrical piece of lead painted red with a row 
of hooks bent backward around the lower end. 
This object the squid embraces, wrapping his 
inner tentacles about it and so impaling himself. 
The instrument is not baited in any way, and 
for a squid to behave as he does toward it 
seems too absurd even for a squid. 

As soon as the tables were set up, the work 
of " dressing down " began in earnest. The 
cod were taken first and whisked through the 
process with great speed and no ceremony. A 
boy tossed the fish from boat to table. A man 
caught it by the head, ran his knife around the 
gills, broke its neck, slit it open down the 
belly, and sent it sliding over the greasy table 
14 209 



Down North and Up Along 

to another man, who tore off its head and 
tossed that into a barrel, tore out its insides, 
tossed the liver into one barrel, the "sound," 
if a big one, into another, the rest of the in- 
wards into a third, and sent the rifled remains 
along to another man who slit it down the 
sides, cut out the backbone, and tossed what 
was left of it into a tub of sea-water, where a 
boy swashed it up and down and laid it aside 
ready to be salted. 

But as long as it takes to tell of one fish, a 
dozen or more had gone through the process ; 
they slipped along from hand to hand in an 
almost unbroken chain. 

The stomachs of the largest cod were opened, 
to see what booty there might be therein, for as 
Father Charlevoix, in his Letters to the Duch- 
ess of Lesdiguieres, published in 1763, says: 

" There is perhaps no Creature, in Proportion to its 
Bigness, that has so wide a Mouth, or that is more 
voracious." 

He tells us that the cod of his day ate iron 
and glass and pieces of broken pots, and then, 
feeling obliged to account for the consequences 
of such a rash diet, he adds : — 
210 










Splitting Tables 



French River 



" Now we are convinced that the Cod can turn 
itself Inside-out like a Pocket, and that the Fish 
frees itself from any Thing that troubles it by this 
Means." 

That was certainly a very convenient habit, 
but one not possessed by the cod of the present 
time. The cod we saw opened had made no 
prizes excepting that three or four good-sized 
lobsters in an unimpaired condition were taken 
from one of them and laid aside. One wonders 
whether it is courage or callousness that enables 
a codfish to swallow a live lobster, claws and 
all, — and why the lobster allows it. 

After the dressing down of the cod came the 
turn of the hake and pollock, then of the 
leathery dogfish, these little sharks being very 
summarily dealt with and not washed at all. 

Last of all came the skates, their enormous 
bodies, shaped like a Chinese kite, almost cov- 
ering the tables and heaving up and down as 
though the creatures were labouring for breath. 
Only a small semi-lunar section is cut out of 
the skate and used ; this is coarse meat, but we 
were told that when well cooked it is not ill 
flavoured. 

The men laughed over their work and talked 

211 



Down North and Up Along 

Gaelic, and we had a feeling that it was as well 
we could not understand all that was being 
said. They were a rude set, harmless enough, 
no doubt, and when at home would probably 
have been found in the scattered houses that 
stand so far from the road. 

Here, at Sandy McDonald's, we saw the 
whole method of deahng with the cod from 
beginning to end, all but the catching of it, 
and we felt quite willing to let that rest with 
the imagination. 

While we made our preparations to depart, 
all of the fishermen in their tarpaulins stood in 
line and looked on. They were very quiet, 
only uttering an occasional comment in Gaelic. 
They made no effort to help or to hinder, 
but stood there. 

Probably it was many a long day since they 
had been blessed with so diverting a spectacle. 
And as for ourselves, we cannot remember a 
time when things proved so contrary, when 
so many apples escaped and rolled around for 
the admiration of the spectator, and when pro- 
visions, personal effects, and cooking utensils 
showed such perverse refusal to go where they 
belonged. To see us harness our horse, ren- 



212 



French River 



dered our attentive audience speechless ; even 
Gaelic failed them. 

At the brow of the hill we turned for a last 
look at the quaint fishing-station, and there 
was the group of tarpaulins, still gazing after 
us. We cannot shake off the feeling that they 
are there still, standing in line and gazing 
speechless toward the brow of the hill. 



ai3 



XV 
CAPE SMOKY 

CAPE NORTH is the home of the 
balsam fir, whose deHghtful fragrance 
fairly pours out in the heat of the 
sun. It is as full of sweetness as 
an orange-tree, every part of it, wood, leaf, 
bark, and root, yielding an aromatic juice. 

There are blisters full of resinous sap on the 
trunks, old firs sometimes having quite large 
reservoirs of this " balsam ; " and we amused 
ourselves by cutting into them with a penknife 
and seeing the clear liquid gush out. It was 
as clear as water with a sharp turpentine taste, 
and quickly dried into a sticky glue. We cut 
a great many balsam blisters on our way to 
Cape North, and we hope the trees did not 
suffer. 

All the way from Baddeck to the rocky 
headland of Cape North, the houses are of the 
same mind with regard to the road and to one 
another. They are scattered far apart and far- 
ther as one goes north, and under no circum- 
214 



Cape Smoky 

stances do they place themselves close to the 
road, which they seem to regard with so much 
distrust. 

The fences are often as picturesque as the 
zigzag rail fence known as the "Virginia 
snake," though it belongs as much to New 
England as to Virginia. Cape Breton fences 
are sometimes made of small tree-trunks with 
the bark on, and these are laid together in a 
manner local to the place and pleasing to the 
eye. The gates are even prettier than the 
fences and are more varied in design, each sec- 
tion seeming to possess its own style of gate- 
architecture. 

The gates do not open into dooryards but 
into wide fields, somewhere beyond which the 
house is safely intrenched. Sometimes there 
are several intervening fields, and he who would 
visit must open several gates before he can get 
to his neighbours. They are wide gates as a 
rule, through which loads of hay can pass. 
The small gate, quickly opened and quickly 
closed, a sort of invitation to enter, is seldom 
seen here. 

The people often shut their doors when they 
saw us coming, and upon one occasion an old 
215 



Down North and Up Along 

woman closed the house and made good her 
escape to the barn. 

Shut the door on us as they would, however, 
we had always an open sesame in the name of 
Mr. Gibbons, and to some of them we bore 
personal messages from him. It was a beauti- 
ful sight to see the hard faces lighten, and sus- 
picion give way to confidence at the mention 
of his name. They eagerly asked news of him, 
and sent back messages of this one and that 
one to whom good or bad fortune had come 
since his departure. 

Human nature is quite as human here as 
elsewhere we discovered upon approaching a 
house set back on a hillside one day. The open 
kitchen door was promptly closed, as, crestfallen 
but not vanquished, we drew near. Presently, 
however, the parlour door was cautiously set 
part way open, and by the time we were fairly 
arrived the inmate was so industriously sewing 
that she did not observe our approach, — this 
notwithstanding that she had been unable to re- 
frain from looking out a moment before to see 
how near we were. The woman was young, 
and she was working upon a bright red merino 
child's dress, elaborately trimmed with lace. 
216 



Cape Smoky 

Such we had not seen elsewhere in Cape Breton, 
and promptly taking our cue we heaped upon 
it the wonderment and praise it merited, while 
the proud mother's eyes shone ; and during her 
detailed exhibition of it we could not help dis- 
covering that it was quite finished and the 
appearance of industry had been but an ingeni- 
ous device to bring it upon the scene. She 
told us she had kept the materials ever since 
she came from Boston, where she had once 
worked. 

To have worked in Boston is a mark of high 
distinction, and gives a girl a right to put on 
airs and be looked up to. She comes back 
from there with ideas and with all sorts of 
household embellishments, many of which are 
of a nature to make one hope they are not dis- 
tinctive of the aesthetic status of Boston. To 
Boston the surplus youth of a family find their 
way, and Boston and the United States are 
synonymous in Cape Breton. 

Boats at Halifax connect with Boston and 
the West Indies, and these ports are the known 
world to the Nova Scotian, besides Canada. 

A woman at Baddeck, upon hearing us men- 
tion Chicago, so soon after its Great Fair, too, 
217 



Down North and Up Along 

said, " Oh, yes, I have heard the name before ; 
it is near Florida." It will be hard for Chi- 
cago to believe this, but it is true. 

This unhappy state of affairs is doubtless 
due to the curious nature of the geographies 
used and taught in the schools. It gives 
one a queer feeling to open one of them and 
observe the great size and multi-coloured ap- 
pearance of Canada, while the United States 
is a little neutral-coloured oblong somewhere 
down below. 

In our geographies, which we know have 
been made with a great deal of care, the relative 
importance of the two countries is reversed, 
Canada appearing as a nearly blank upper 
border to the map, while the United States is 
evidently a mighty nation, resplendent in bril- 
liant geographical colouring. Could the Nova 
Scotian be induced — or compelled — to use 
our school books, he would soon cease to be 
ignorant. 

We made many calls along the road, having 
always an excuse in asking the way or buying 
potatoes. This last was M.'s duty, and she regu- 
larly fulfilled it by presenting the large copper 
cent of the country, and asking for its equivalent 
218 



Cape Smoky 

in potatoes. This was a language the people 
understood, and the cent was always honoured 
by enough potatoes for a meal, — the only busi- 
ness transaction we had with these canny Scotch 
in which we felt perfectly sure they were not 
getting the better of us. 

The houses contained four or five rooms 
generally, though some had an attic as well. 
In the best of them was always a sitting-room 
or parlour, its floor covered with home-made 
rugs, and on the table were a few books of a 
theological nature. Opening from the sitting- 
room there was often a tiny guest-chamber 
elaborately furnished with rugs and tidies. 

There was one ornament in several of these 
houses which we never had seen anywhere else. 
This was a chocolate-coloured card, whereon 
were set forth the virtues of a deceased mem- 
ber of the family in gilt letters. These cards 
were lying on the centre-table in the parlour ; 
and though they did not add to its cheerfulness 
we liked them better than the silver coffin- 
plates framed in black velvet which we had 
seen hanging on the walls of a Massachusetts 
farmhouse. 

Every house has its rugs, sometimes beauti- 
219 



Down North and Up Along 

ful and always interesting. They cover the 
otherwise bare floor of the parlour, where there 
is one, and make spots of warmth for the feet 
in kitchen and bedroom. They are made of 
rags " hooked " into a foundation of coarse 
cotton cloth. 

The women save their rags and colour them 
charmingly from the bark of trees and from 
plants which they gather in the forest and 
steep for the purpose. With these coloured 
rags they work through the long winters, creat- 
ing marvellous patterns of flower or bird, or 
merely of combinations of geometric figures, or 
of figures known to no science whatever. They 
vie with one another and willingly endure much 
weariness, for a large rug is a back-aching and a 
finger-aching task. One who has not seen 
these creations could hardly believe there were 
such possibilities in rags. They are to the 
women of Cape Breton what worsted work, 
wax flowers, and various forms of painting are 
to the country people of some other places. 
But here the occupation never changes, the craze 
of one season is the craze of the next. Often 
these rugs were more lurid than harmonious 
in their colours, but the most of them gave a 



Cape Smoky 

homely cheeriness to the bare raftered roomc 
that could not be dispensed with. 

Besides making rugs many of the women 
spin and weave their own cloth ; and in a few 
of the houses the clumsy and picturesque loom 
was still standing, though for the most part the 
looms were not in place, weaving being winter 
work. 

Cape North homespun is not beautiful. 
The warp is made of cotton and the cloth is 
harsh to the touch, and generally ugly in colour. 
But the great loom, sometimes half filling the 
room, is a picturesque adjunct to the cottages 
which we hope will not be in haste to depart. 

Most of the houses had no chimneys and 
of course no fireplaces, a stove-pipe through 
a hole in the roof allowing the smoke to 
escape. A queer cylinder-backed stove was 
very common, as if some enterprising stove 
agent had passed that way within a recent his- 
torical period. 

How^the people manage to keep warm 
through the long winters is a mystery, for the 
houses seemed to us in many cases but little 
better suited to withstand the cold than are the 
cabins of Southern Florida. 



Down North and Up Along 

We were vividly reminded of the south, too, 
by seeing women washing clothes out of doors. 
They had the same large black iron pots for 
heating water over a fire on the ground. One 
wonders how early in the season they begin it, 
and how late they end it, and what happens 
during the long months of deep snow when no 
clothes can be washed out of doors. 

The kitchen was the largest room and the 
most interesting. The dishes stood in a home- 
made dresser open in front, the plates and 
saucers upright in rows against the wall, and 
the cups hanging on hooks. There were 
wooden chests standing along the sides, that 
also served for seats, and odd-looking little 
cupboards hung on the walls, while various 
objects depended from the beams with pictur- 
esque effect. Sometimes a wide bed stood in 
one corner. 

The men belonging to these houses are 
fishermen, and the women do the work of the 
fields. a^ 

The women in the barley fields were a 
pleasant sight as we passed along, and came 
upon them amongst the yellow grain in their 
short homespun petticoats, a gay kerchief tied 



Cape Smoky 

over their heads, and the bright sickle in their 
hands, for the barley is cut with sickles here. 
One in search of pictures of peasant life need 
not go farther than the barley fields of Cape 
Breton. 

The men fish and the women work the 
farms. I asked a girl which was the harder. 
" Oh, the fishing," she replied ; " that is much 
harder; the field work will be easy." She told 
us the men sometimes went out at four o'clock 
in the morning and did not get back until four 
in the afternoon, and all that time without 
food, " for they will never eat on the boats." 

The people are industrious and temperate. 
One of them told us Cape Breton folks had to 
be ; they had to work continually, and strong 
drink meant immediate ruin. 

The fare is principally salt fish and potatoes, 
strong tea and oatmeal porridge. Each family 
keeps a cow and a few hens, and some have 
sheep. No attempt seems ever to be made to 
prepare the food in any but the simplest and 
to our minds least palatable manner. The fish 
is boiled, the potatoes are boiled, and the meal 
is served without any further trouble. 

The children, brought up on a diet of oat- 
223 



Down North and Up Along 

meal, salt fish, and potatoes, scorn the luxuries 
of an effete civilisation, as we discovered upon 
presenting some bananas to the youngsters of 
a house where we stopped. They tasted, spat 
violently, and ran howling to their mother, who 
was as much mortified as we were amused. 
We thereafter refrained from proffering tropi- 
cal fruits to children reared so near the pole. 

In the winter, it seems that those who own 
sheep kill one, and this gives them the only 
fresh meat of the year. Of course the poorer 
families do not have even this. 

At the time of our visit the mountains were 
covered with blueberries, the largest and 
sweetest we ever tasted. These the people 
gathered and ate without sugar or milk, and 
allowed the surplus to lie and ferment, in 
which state they seemed to be relished just as 
well, though they were as sour as vinegar and 
half decomposed. No one took the trouble to 
cook them or dry them, or in any way pre- 
serve them for winter use. 

We stopped at some strange places in the 
course of our leisurely journey, and the mo- 
ment of reckoning was always a delightful one 
to M., who stood discreetly aloof and watched 
224 




Early Morning on the Coast 



Cape Smoky 

her partner feebly struggling in unequal con- 
test with disciplined and inherited Scotch 
" thrift." No matter how pleasant our inter- 
course with the family had been, when the 
time came for settling the account there was a 
tightening up, so to speak, of voice and visage, 
we were regarded with intense suspicion, and 
our indebtedness announced in a voice so hard 
and cold as to be quite terrifying. The man — 
for the settlement was always made with the 
man — knew he had charged more than value 
rendered, and was prepared to combat any 
remonstrance. 

But when the matter was settled, even if we 
won a few points, the former friendliness re- 
turned, " business " was over, and whatever 
firmness we had displayed was far from having 
lowered us in the esteem of these canny 
Scotchmen. M. said they liked us all the 
better for it. They sometimes excused them- 
selves by explaining that we " had money in 
the bank and could pay as well as not," other- 
wise we would not be able to " take a cruise " 
just for pleasure. 

It was soon after leaving Sandy McDonald's 
that we pulled up short to keep from run- 
15 225 



Down North and Up Along ' 

ning over an old man who tottered across the 
road under Dan's nose, and then clasped our 
front wheel in both bony hands as though to 
anchor us there. He gazed at us, and we at 
him, and finally we spoke to him, and he re- 
plied, " Sorr ? " Thinking him deaf, we spoke 
louder, but he still replied, " Sorr ? " Then it 
dawned upon us that we were talking in an 
unknown tongue, and we inquired if he spoke 
Gaelic ; " garlic " they pronounce it here. He 
nodded in the affirmative and also assured us 
that he could " speak enough English," and 
began a friendly conversation in his native 
Gaelic, which we on our part kept up in well- 
chosen English, and thus we passed a most 
agreeable half-hour, each saying exactly what 
he thought, without danger of giving offence 
to the other. 

To say " yes, sir, to a gentleman, and yes, 
ma'am, to a lady," has evidently been a part 
of the polite education of these regions, but 
" sorr " has nearly superseded " ma'am," being 
applied universally and regardless of sex, and we 
received the polite responses, " yes, sorr," and 
"no, sorr," the whole length of Cape North, — 
usually with unconscious gravity, but in the 
226 



Cape Smoky 

case of pretty Katie McPherson it was the cause 
of much confusion. We met Katie and sev- 
eral other httle girls on their way home from 
school. They stood aside, with downcast eyes 
and fingers in their mouths, to let us pass, for 
the children here are very bashful, but when 
we stopped and inquired the way to a certain 
house, Katie rose to the emergency and said, 
" Sorr ? " We repeated the question in a 
friendly and beguiling manner, punctuating 
our remarks with a ginger cooky apiece, for 
we had brought a supply of these delectable 
things for just such occasions ; and Katie, 
from amidst her gratitude and blushes, was 
finally able to articulate, " no, sorr," then the 
impropriety of her remark burst upon her and 
she quickly amended, " no, ma'am," nearly 
overcome by shame and the fit of giggling 
that seized her. 

" I don't think," which seems to be the only 
form of speech expressing doubt in all Nova 
Scotia, is also frequently heard in Cape North. 
It is rather disconcerting at first to inquire 
whether your road takes a certain direction and 
be sadly informed that he whom you address 
" don't think." You will often have no diffi- 
227 



Down North and Up Along 

culty in believing the statement, but in time 
will learn that it does not mean quite what it 
says. 

All along the way are rounded hillsides cov- 
ered with tawny grass and run over by large 
white sheep with beautiful fleeces. The sheep 
were never in large flocks, but in groups of 
half-a-dozen or so. Sometimes they would 
come tumbling down a bank by the roadside 
and run along in front of us to disappear into 
the first gap that took their fancy. But gen- 
erally we saw them on the hillsides moving 
about, or bounding in graceful undulations 
through the tawny grass. These hillsides were 
often yellow with the airy August flower, which 
may not have been nutritious, but was lovely 
in company with the large soft-fleeced sheep. 

It being harvest time, we constantly came 
upon distracting pictures of red-cheeked, short- 
gowned girls among the yellow barley, stoop- 
ing, with one hand grasping the ripe grain, 
the other the sickle, and eyeing us curiously 
as they stopped midway in their work, or else 
standing erect, arms on hips and sickle still in 
hand, to gaze after the strangers. Sometimes 
we stopped and spoke to them, but seldom 

228 



Cape Smoky 

with much result. The old women were often 
seen in the barley patches, equally picturesque 
though not as pretty as the young ones ; and 
the old, old men were sometimes there, those 
too old to fish. 

Those were halcyon days, when we travelled 
toward Cape North in the sunshine, with the 
invigorating air about us, the barley fields yel- 
low with ripe grain and gay with the reapers, 
and the sea with its white sails ever coming 
unexpectedly into view, while the beautiful 
sheep started from the fir woods at the road- 
side or bounded over the flowery hills. 

Cape North is the artist's paradise from end 
to end, and it is an ideal place for camping, 
with its fine summer weather, its refreshing 
brooks at short intervals, and its beautiful 
mountains and sea. 

On the way to Smoky, one passes Wreck 
Cove, its name sadly significant, for every year 
there are terrible shipwrecks along this iron- 
bound coast. Wreck Cove, however, in the 
summer-time and from the land side, is terri- 
fying only in name, for about it are lovely 
hills that make of it a miniature Indian Brook. 

As one nears Smoky, the houses and barley 
229 



Down North and Up Along 

fields are left behind, the road takes a turn to 
the left and runs some distance into the land, 
following a very noisy water-course which 
rushes through a glen at the right and which 
is so far down that only the tops of the trees — 
maples, birches, and oaks — whose roots are at 
its level, reach to the road where we journey. 
Much of the time we cannot see it through 
the intervening foliage, but again we catch 
glimpses of bright, hurrying water. 

This is one of those mossy-banked roads 
one remembers with such pleasure ; and at a 
brook which crosses it we stopped one day 
for dinner, that we might be rested and re- 
freshed for the difficult passing of Smoky, 
with its wonderful views and its terrifying 
precipices. Over a camp-fire such as we had 
now learned to make with skill, we prepared 
a tempting meal of broiled " American " bacon. 
Cape Breton potatoes stewed in milk, hard 
ship's biscuit, French pickles, and a cup of 
coffee. For dessert we had " capillaire " ber- 
ries, exquisite store of which we found adorn- 
ing the mossy bank near which we rested. 
" Capillaire " is the pretty name there given 
to our snowberry, the daintiest darling of our 
230 



Cape Smoky 

northern mountains. Nothing could be de- 
vised for a mossy bank loveher than its fairy- 
vines tracing an embroidery of tiny leaves 
over the moss, or hanging in a curtain over 
the edge, and nothing that grows could be 
daintier than its snowy fruit with its peculiar 
and delicate flavour. 

While sitting on the mossy bank beside the 
snowberries, we had the added pleasure of 
being croaked to by ravens. We had expected 
to make their acquaintance, if we were so for- 
tunate as to do so at all, the other side of 
Smoky, for we had heard they nested near 
Ingonish. But surely these great black fel- 
lows were they, though probably we should 
not have discovered it had they kept still. 
The hoarse, rattling cry that revealed their 
identity and surprised and delighted us was 
never the voice of a crow. 

On a firm bridge we crossed the chasm of 
the deep-down brook we had been following, 
and began to ascend a winding road. Occa- 
sional outlooks through the trees afforded en- 
chanting glimpses of far-reaching blue sea, of 
bold bluffs that stood on the edge of the water 
and of intervening valleys. Rocky slopes near 
231 



Down North and Up Along 

us were grown over by blueberry bushes with 
reddened leaves and lavish abundance of ripe 
fruit ; while the round-leaved, aromatic winter- 
green of our childhood deeply carpeted the 
wayside. Heavy growths of ferns and brakes 
filled the hollows. We went slowly, even more 
slowly than the rising grade demanded, often 
stopping to enjoy the wildness and the sweet- 
ness of the way. As we went on, the expand- 
ing views and the greater depths into which we 
looked told us we were nearing the top. 

No perils of the way had been encountered 
until of a sudden we came upon a ledge where 
were realised our hopes of Smoky and almost 
our fears. On our left rose the wall of the 
mountain, while between that and the deep 
descent to the sea was the ledge upon which 
the road had been built. It was a good 
enough road now, buttressed by heavy planks 
and widened by broken stone, but it was easy 
to see how in other times it had been a slant- 
ing and dangerous trail where the traveller 
might have met with disaster. The view was 
of the sea over the tree-tops that grew on the 
lower slopes. It was a lofty perch, from which 
the sails looked like white dots on the water. 
232 



Cape Smoky 

We passed this ledge and went on through 
the woods soon to turn a corner and find our- 
selves upon a similar ledge and facing the 
majestic form of Cape Smoky. 

It stood across an abyss from us, a bold front 
of red syenite rising nearly a thousand feet up 
out of the sea in a very steep slope. Its vast, 
storm-polished front was bare and scarred 
except where near the top the blueberry and 
other bushes had painted it warm tones of red 
and yellow. The hard syenite had resisted the 
merciless dash of winter sleet and the yet more 
merciless action of the frost to a wonderful 
degree. Instead of being torn and jagged, the 
splendid sweep of stone was smooth and in 
places fairly polished. 

There was no cloud about the brow of 
Smoky then ; the massive form lay before us 
in the light of a clear day, sharp-cut against 
the blue above and the blue below, for the 
sea line was high on Smoky's flank from where 
we stood. 

Out of the blue sea the form of the ruddy 

headland rose in the clear northern air, while 

back of it, though not visible from this point, 

were other iire-born mountains of yet greater 

233 



Down North and Up Along 

height, but all more or less softened by time 
and clad in vegetation. 

Only Smoky's stern front remains bare to the 
terrific storms that in vain assail it and that 
cause the waves to beat with frightful but 
unavailing force against its iron base. Filled 
with a sense of its immutability and impressed 
by its stern grandeur, we wound along our 
narrow ledge and down behind the mighty 
headland. 



234 



XVI 
INGONISH 

BACK of Smoky the road winds up hill 
and down, through closely wooded 
hollows and over barren highlands. 
The sea is lost and the glory thereof, 
the impressive and beautiful headlands that 
abut upon the coast are not in view, the stu- 
pendous front of Smoky has vanished. We 
found it a road diversified by pleasing but 
milder aspects of nature, where the highway 
finally assumed the appearance of a grass-grown 
lane, and where the trees were oaks, maples, 
and birches. 

Then came a roar like a great wind in the 
trees and a glen deep and dark opened along 
our right hand, a turbulent brook shouting from 
its depths. 

We followed this glen, now on its verge, 
now so far away that only the voice of the 
brook told where it was ; and finally we struck 
once more across barren ridges, and through 
hollows where the fir-tree reigned; and finally, 
235 



Down North and Up Along 

a steep climb, a sudden turn, and before us lay 
the far-famed, the lovely Ingonish. 

It was near the hour of sunset that we 
came upon Ingonish set in her mountains and 
touched by the sea. There is a glory of north- 
ern skies than which no southern splendour is 
ever sweeter or more tender. That glory lay 
upon the sea and the mountains of Ingonish as 
we came upon them. 

A river broke through the hills to the north 
and found its way into a bay almost closed by 
a cobblestone bar similar to that of English- 
town, but on a much larger scale. Beyond the 
bar lay another calm bay, while mountains of 
exquisite beauty rose tier upon tier from the 
very water's edge and half encircled the Bay of 
Ingonish. We descended a steep hill that 
turned on itself in a sudden curve, and soon 
found ourselves on the shore facing the Ingo- 
nish ferry, which is far more formidable than 
the one at Englishtown. The surf ground the 
pebbles on the shore, and we had to be rowed 
over a long stretch of restless sea to the cob- 
blestone bar. But Dan did not disappoint us; 
he climbed into the ferryboat at Ingonish as 
cleverly as he had into the one at Englishtown. 
236 



Ingonish 

We were touched by the exceeding beauty 
of the mountains as we looked back toward the 
shore. To our left lay Smoky, for we now 
saw the opposite side of that fine headland. 
It swept up from the sea, but not in an 
unbroken line, for on this side itwas buttressed 
by cliffs, while about its brow had collected the 
mist wraiths that give it its name. In front of 
us and to the right, mountain looked above 
mountain encircling the water with gracious 
forms of divinest colour, for over the earth the 
setting sun had spread a glow that made 
poetical the mountains, deepening the shadows 
in the hollows and softening the beautiful 
outlines. In the sky above and reflecting over 
land and sea was a strange and delicious har- 
mony of dark purples, blues, and greens ; 
while against the sky Smoky's red front caught 
a deeper and a softer hue. 

There was a sense of great calm and un- 
utterable peace in the scene. The world 
seemed too fair for strife or unrest of any kind. 
It was a rare moment, and the South Bay of 
Ingonish will always stay in our memories as 
one of the loveliest scenes we ever beheld. It 
is lovely not only at sunset or at sunrise, but 
237 



Down North and Up Along 

what is more rare, even at midday. The 
mountains have a marvellous charm of com- 
position, the finest view being near the shore 
of the mainland, though from any point it can- 
not fail to give pleasure. 

There is an island at the mouth of the 
harbour which shuts it from the force of the sea, 
and upon which stands the inevitable light- 
house. 

We crossed the ferry to the cobblestone 
bar, where stood some fish-huts and a boat- 
landing, for the boat stops here on its way 
from Hahfax to Newfoundland. 

Beyond the bar was a beautiful beach pro- 
tected by a rocky point of land from the force 
of the sea, that otherwise would soon have 
covered it with cobblestones. We were told 
that the water here is as warm as that much 
farther south, and that the bathing in the 
summer months is delightful. 

There was a tent close to the house where 
we stayed, and here was a doctor, who, being 
in need of rest and a little fishing, had been 
spending the summer. It was to him we owed 
our introduction to the art of angling. 

It is true we had Mr. A.'s rod along, but it 
238 



Ing 



onis, 



was still strapped to the back of the seat, for 
our experience in fishing dated a long way 
back and had been of a very simple nature, 
and we had too much respect for the mysteries 
of the craft to trust to the memories of our 
childhood. But encouraged by the learned 
doctor, we cast our line into the waters of the 
bay, standing meanwhile on the loose boards 
of a peculiarly rickety wharf, and drew forth 
many smelts. 

There is a curious and irresistible fascina- 
tion connected with pulling fish out of the 
water that admits of no reasonable explanation. 
It ensnares the victim, regardless of sex or 
previous habits, and to my bewilderment it 
ensnared my companion, the most tender- 
hearted of mortals, and who up to that time 
had shuddered at the thought of touching a 
cold, wet fish. 

She was standing on the wharf watching 
us when the doctor, ignorant of her distaste 
for angling, in the kindness of his heart 
put his rod into her hand, which she, out 
of politeness, held for a moment. But this 
moment was fatal. There came a twitch to 
the line that sent a strange thrill through 
239 



Down North and Up Along 

her, and with glowing eyes she — landed a 
smelt. 

The gods play strange pranks with us poor 
mortals, and never did they play a stranger 
than when they converted M. into the most 
inveterate disciple of Izaak Walton through 
the medium of one wretched little salt-water 
smelt. 

In this case, catching the fish had the very 
agreeable sequence of cooking them out of 
doors and eating them. 

Our gypsy dinners cooked at noon by the 
wayside were the one substantial meal of the 
day, breakfast and supper consisting of oat- 
meal porridge, sometimes without milk, and 
toasted bread, sour, as a rule, though if we 
asked for them, we could generally get an egg 
and some salt fish. 

But those midday meals ! the flavour of them, 
with the aroma of the wood-fire clinging about 
the viands, and the hunger that waited upon 
them ! Even to think of them at this late day 
is enough to quicken the appetite. 

Up to this time we had found that the 
canned or smoked meat of our native land 
with the addition of ship biscuit, milk from a 
240 



Ingonish 

wayside cottage, and a penny's worth of Cape 
Breton potatoes capable of being prepared in 
many appetising ways completely satisfied us ; 
but now all was changed. We entered upon 
an era of camp cooking that revolutionised 
our previous habits and converted us for all 
time to come into exacting epicures. 

On the stones by a brook-side we cooked 
and ate the result of our first day's fishing, — 
smelts, and a few small bass. Smelts are more 
delicate in flavour than bass, and they possess 
the great advantage of being without scales. 
The scaling of a small bass is infinitely more 
entertaining to the onlooker than to the opera- 
tor. The slippery little thing has to be held 
by its slippery little tail while one scrapes 
against the scales, and consequently the ex- 
asperating object is flying through the air most 
of the time. 

The doctor did not spend much time fish- 
ing off the wharf, as certain large brook trout 
in his tent testified. He had preserved the 
largest and displayed their dried forms with 
exceeding great pride. He explained to us his 
way of curing them and considered a pound 
and a half a good size for a trout, though the 

i6 241 



Down North and Up Along 

best of those on his table had weighed twice and 
three times that much before they were cured, 
so he said. He thought it a great pity that 
trout shrink up and lose weight so when cured. 

He had caught endless dozens of trout, the 
smaller of which he had sent to distant friends, 
but the largest he could not part with and kept 
their smoked and shining forms spread out on 
his table. 

From this time forth our peace of mind was 
gone ; we were the victims of the " gentle art 
of angling," and looked at the rushing brooks 
not so much to admire as to wonder about the 
speckled trout hiding in their pools. 

There are two Ingonishes. They are both 
accented on the last syllable, and are separated 
from each other by a long neck of land known 
as Middlehead. 

This neck cuts the broad bay, that would 
otherwise exist, in two, and forms the lovely 
South Bay and the almost equally charming 
North Bay. To go from one to the other, a 
distance of about eight miles, the road passes 
across the mainland end of the neck, and one 
loses sight of the water, though never far from 
it. 

242 



/: 



ngo 



ntSi 



Two miles from South Ingonish on the road 
to the north, one crosses a bridge, and just the 
other side of it an obscure track turns off to 
the left. It is stony and rough, and in one 
place rather alarmingly steep, but it passes 
along a valley, mountain-guarded and traversed 
by a brook. After following the track two or 
three miles, the brook is found quite close to it, 
and one comes almost under the great cliff of 
rock known as Franey's chimney. This ap- 
pears to have been split from the mountain 
wall behind it, and stands forth a massive, frown- 
ing form as though on guard over the wild 
glen and the rugged cliffs of the mountains 
about. 

It is a wild place down there under Franey's 
chimney, a lonely place where one would not 
be surprised to see antlers or the clumsy form 
of the bear that we knew frequented these 
mountains. 

Here we camped, — that is, we gave Dan a 
limited freedom, — unpacked the fishing-rod, 
which had suddenly become an object of vital 
interest in our eyes, and took our way across a 
stretch of meadow to the brook-side. We 
soon came upon a series of dark pools close to 
243 



T)ow7i North and Up Along 

the shore, and with little expectation of draw- 
ing forth anything so " said and sung " about 
as a speckled trout, with our unskilled hands, 
we hardened our hearts and strung upon the 
hook a large angleworm, distinguished by a 
magnificent wriggle, condoning the offence by 
the reflection that according to the latest word 
of science upon the nervous system of the 
worm, it does not really suffer when thus mis- 
used. This we seductively dropped into a 
pool, with no real expectation, for there have 
been many books writ upon trout-fishing, and 
we supposed that only an artificial fly of strange 
construction, thrown with secret and consum- 
mate skill, could land one of these famous 
creatures. And we knew ourselves for simple 
folk with no wiles but such as could be offered 
by a plain angleworm, a live one at that, with 
not an artificial hair on its head. 

Still, no sooner had our plebeian worm 
entered the dark pool than there came a thrill- 
ing twitch to the line, and we flung upon the 
bank as pretty a red and gold speckled trout 
as one could ask to see, thereby dispelling for 
ever the almost religious mystery that had here- 
tofore enveloped trout-fishing in our minds. 
244 







Catching Trout for Dinner 



Ing 



onis 



h 



We then and there made the important dis- 
covery that, notwithstanding the glamour of 
romance in which the books have enveloped 
them, brook trout are mere fish, after all. They 
swallow a worm with a hook inside just as the 
" sunfish " in the mill-pond of our childhood 
used to swallow a bent pin under the same 
circumstances. We afterward wished we had 
tried a bent pin on the trout, to complete the 
confusion of those writers who have for so 
long a time been imposing on a too credu- 
lous public. 

These thoughts did not trouble us at the 
moment, however, for, after all, there is a magi- 
cal fascination in a brook trout, which can no 
more be resisted than it can be explained. 

Probably no trout is ever half so beautiful as 
the first one caught. Our acquaintance with 
them heretofore had been in picture-books, 
or nicely browned on the table, but here lay a 
live one in the green grass, all speckled and 
coloured like a rainbow, and no wonder great 
Franey leaned out of the sky to see. 

There was but one rod, and two ot us, and 
we took turns and agonised between, knowing 
so well we could get the proverbial big one out 
245 



Down North and Up Along 

of the pool, if it had only happened to be our 
turn. But when our turn came, we never got 
the big one. We caught any number of small 
ones, however, and lost more than we caught, 
for they had a way of jumping off the hook in 
mid-air and falling back into the water with a 
shake and a flirt. The largest ones invariably 
did this, and did it with such apparent intention 
and malice that we began to think there might 
be something in the books, after all. 

They were so pretty we hated to cook them ; 
some were dark in colour with deep-coloured 
spots ; and some were golden-brown, almost 
as though saturated with light, with lighter 
and brighter spots, and these were the prettiest. 
We did cook them ; and what could be daintier 
or more delicious than the snowy-white or 
salmon-pink morsels that came out of the 
frying-pan ? We ate all we caught, and would 
not like to say how many that was. 

Nor did this end the adventures of that day 
under Franey. While resting after our delect- 
able dinner and the exciting events of the morn- 
ing, we saw a small party of men and boys 
advancing down the glen. They were burdened 
with something they bore upon poles resting on 

246 



Ingonish 

their shoulders, and we went to see what it was. 
What was our surprise to find the skins and 
flesh of two bears which they had just killed 
on the back of the mountain beneath which we 
were resting. They were young bears, and 
had been feeding for many days on the blue- 
berries that cover the mountains ; they were 
very fat and their flesh was good, and one of 
the men cut us a piece from a hind-quarter. 
This was the first fresh meat we had seen since 
leaving Baddeck, and we took it, though not 
without misgivings. It seemed too bad to 
have killed the little bears playing among the 
blueberries on the mountain-top ; and then 
one hesitates to eat the flesh of a creature that 
can be taught to walk upright, and even to 
dance. Still, there was another side to it, and 
we no doubt had reason to be thankful that 
the bears had not taken a notion to hunt us, 
while the men on the mountains were hunting 
them. To an unprejudiced mind it is as fair 
for people to eat bears as for bears to eat peo- 
ple, the only question being which can catch 
the other. 

So we took the bear-meat and also a pail of 
the blueberries the men had picked, for they 
247 



Down North and Up Along 

had got not only the bears but the berries the 
bears had wanted to get. They were enor- 
mous blueberries ; we never saw so large be- 
fore nor since, and they were sweet and juicy. 
The bears know what they are about when 
they go to the mountains for blueberries. 

We entered North Ingonish, as we had en- 
tered South Ingonish, toward the end of the 
afternoon. Its bay is more open to the sea, 
and has not the inner harbour of the South 
Bay. The mountains are about it, more dis- 
tant, but still lovely, and before it lies a beach 
of exceeding beauty and grandeur. It sweeps 
in a long and beautiful curve half-way around 
the bay, lines of splendid breakers rolling in. 
It is a wide beach of fine sand and slopes 
gently to the sea, where the snowy breakers 
repeat the exquisite curve of the shore. 

North Ingonish is very beautiful, though 
quite different from South Ingonish. Its more 
distant mountains were lovely in the evening 
light in which we first saw them and its circling 
beach and wide bay. Smoky was visible, 
though softened by the distance, as was also 
the contour of the surrounding headlands. 

We were not prepared for the astonishing 
248 



In go 



nis. 



beauty of the Ingonishes, nor did it seem pos- 
sible they could lie there so lonely in their 
loveliness, unvisited by pleasure-seeking man. 

The Ingonish people are fishermen, and are 
principally Irish and Scotch Catholics. Like 
Englishtown the place was known long ago, 
and was at one time a flourishing French fish- 
ing settlement, but war required victims, and 
the men of Ingonish were drawn away to fight 
instead offish, and the place, like St. Anne, was 
finally wrested from the French by the English 
of Commodore Warren's fleet. 

Traces of the period of French prosperity 
are said still to exist, though we did not know 
about them at the time, and no one volun- 
teered information concerning the relics of the 
past. It seems that a large church was built 
here, and in 1849 a bell weighing not less than 
two hundred pounds was dug out of the sand 
of the beach. It bore a French inscription 
and was marked St. Malo, 1729, and was said 
to have had a remarkably clear tone which 
must have been heard far out to sea. It was 
carried away to Sydney, which the people of 
Ingonish never should have allowed. 

In 1740, the records tell us, Ingonish was 
249 



Down North and Up Along 

the second town of Cape Breton, and its fleet 
caught 13,560 quintals of fish. This is that 
Niganiche where the French in olden time 
went a-fishing, and where a paternal govern- 
ment ordered them away to the safe harbour 
of Port Dauphin, as St. Anne was called, after 
the fifteenth of August. 

" From Port Dauphin we arrived at Niga- 
niche," says Pinchon, " which is only a road, 
where the vessels are far from being safe ; but 
there is great plenty of codfish. Yet as it 
must be deserted at a certain season, and the 
country thereabouts is quite barren, there are 
hardly any dwellings upon the place. Even 
those few inhabitants are obliged to fetch their 
wood for firing from Port Dauphin." 

Ingonish may well have discouraged a 
people obliged to live on what they found 
there. But the day will come when its beauty 
will bring it a larger revenue than its codfish 
ever have brought or ever will bring. 

The highlands back of Ingonish used to be 
noted for the large game found there. Caribou 
and moose are said to have once existed in 
almost incredible numbers. But this is not a 
pleasant topic, for the deer were slaughtered 
250 



Ingonish 

in the most ruthless manner because their hides 
brought the sum of ten shiUings each ; and 
what mattered the extermination of the noblest 
animals of the country compared to ten shill- 
ings in a man's pocket ? 

We are told that in 1729 over nine thou- 
sand moose were killed for their skins alone, 
and that for many years this wholesale slaughter 
was kept up unchecked. So great was the 
stench from the decaying bodies that sailors 
knew by that alone when they were approach- 
ing the north shore of Cape Breton. 

It is needless to comment upon the result. 
All too late a body of troops was stationed at 
Ingonish to protect the moose, but there were 
few left to need protection, and since then the 
unequal contest has gone on, Indians and 
sportsmen combining to destroy the noble 
animal, until now it and the caribou are almost 
exterminated in the highlands about Ingonish. 

We saw no quails in our travels, for we were 
a little too far north for them, but the Canada 
or spruce grouse in small companies ran along 
the road in front of the horse exhibiting very 
little fear. 

Ingonish is not wholly inaccessible, nor is 
251 



Down North and Up Along 

North Ingonish devoid of comforts for the 
visitor. 

A small steamboat, the " Harlow," runs from 
Halifax to Newfoundland, stopping at Bad- 
deck, Englishtown, South and North Ingonish, 
and north of these places at Aspy Bay and 
Bay St. Lawrence. 

The " Harlow " carries a siren which once 
was the cause of great consternation along this 
lovely coast, for the boat and her siren came 
without warning, and the people one night were 
terrified by a wild and awful yell as of some 
frightful demon rushing in from the sea. They 
are said to have fled inland and remained in 
the forest trembling through the night, until 
daylight gave them courage to creep forth and 
question the source of the frightful noise. 
Unexpectedly to hear the " Harlow's" siren 
along that lonely shore might well cause a thrill 
to any nerves. 

At Ingonish is the first public-house after 
leaving Baddeck, — a pleasant place on a beau- 
tiful site, with sea and mountains before the 
door, and very well kept. 

This house is approached through a lane 
bordered by fish-flakes of a size intermediate 
252 



Ingonish 

between those of Digby and French River, 
and upon them were drying the everlasting cod. 
The family, too, keeps the store, that opens on 
the lane, and doubtless the post-office is there, 
for the postman drives in his two-wheeled cart 
from Baddeck up along when the weather is 
fit, but in winter he carries his budget on a 
sledge drawn by dogs. 

There are wharves for the fishing-boats at 
North Ingonish ; and these, with the boats 
lying about, give it a pleasing touch of the 
picturesque. 

Ingonish is the end of the tourists' explora- 
tions as a rule. Few find their way thither, 
still fewer go north of there ; and as we looked 
toward the mysterious and yet distant Cape 
North, we had the pleasurable feeling that it at 
least was all our own. 



253 



XVII 
THE HALF WAY HOUSE 

FROM Ingonish to Aspy Bay is a 
frightful country, almost uninhabited, 
excepting for the settlement of Neils 
Harbour, which lies on the rocky 
coast a mile from the Half Way House. 

The Half Way House is eighteen miles 
from Ingonish and was put in the wilderness 
by the government for the succour of those 
obliged to pass that way, for it is said that 
formerly people perished on the mountains or 
in the swamps. In bad weather it must be 
very difficult to cross that country ; and the 
Half Way House with its warmth and good 
cheer must be a welcome sight to the weary 
and half-frozen traveller. 

Climbing the hill out of Ingonish, we looked 
constantly back at the beautiful and unfolding 
views. The road was so stony and weather- 
worn that part of the time we preferred to 
walk, and Dan preferred that we should. We 
came to an occasional lonely starved little 
254 



The Half Way House 

farm, where the women with their kerchiefs 
and gleaming sickles were at work in the yel- 
low barley patches. We stopped each time to 
pass a word and see their faces lighten, as we 
told them Parson Gibbons had sent us to see 
their country and had sent messages to them. 
They all asked eagerly when he was coming 
back. 

We crossed a bridge and turned into the 
bushes to let a waggon pass. Instead of pass- 
ing, it stopped in a friendly way while we told 
our names, where we came from, and whither 
we were going. It contained Mrs. Morri- 
son of Green Cove and Mr. Timmons, and 
they were on their way to Mrs. Timmons's 
mother's, for we, too, had learned to be polite 
and ask questions. 

Soon there were no more barley patches and 
the road dwindled to a mere track where the 
horse waded up to his middle in grass, ever- 
lasting, and golden-rod, and finally plunged 
into the dismal swamp that crosses the country 
here. We laboured for several miles through 
as desolate a region as one need care to 
know. It was for the most part an alder- 
choked swamp, the road cut through a solid 
255 



Down No7'th and Up Along 

wall of gloomy green, the wheels oftentimes 
hub-deep in mud, while stones in the ruts 
constantly canted the waggon to one side or 
the other. This sort of enjoyment was diver- 
sified by more open places where mud and 
stones gave place to all stones, and where were 
sepulchral reaches of dead trees, their branches 
all fallen away, and the trunks and limbs shin- 
ing ghostly white. From time to time we 
caught glimpses of stony and barren high- 
lands, only to plunge hopelessly into alders 
and mud again. We named this charming 
road the Melancholy Way of the Alders, and 
whoever passes that way will agree that it 
deserves its name. 

We met no one, and so we shall never know 
what would have happened if we had, in that 
narrow alley where one could scarcely have 
pulled out of the deep ruts even if there had 
been any place to pull to. 

Many stories are told of this swamp ; one 
is that whoever steps into it cannot step out 
again until the next day. We also heard of 
the traveller who, passing the gloomy road one 
summer night, saw a light in the swamp, and 
upon stopping and shouting elicited the infor- 

2^6 



The Half Way House 

mation that it proceeded from the pipe of an 
old woman who, having inadvertently stepped 
in and knowing the legend, was philosophically 
biding her time and making the best of a bad 
matter by solacing the dreary hours with her 
pipe until daylight should come to break the 
spell and set her free. 

This recalled another story that shows how 
good a thing superstition is in other people, 
if one only knows how to make use of it. It 
is said the Highlanders of Cape North have 
more or less faith in bogies and a correspond- 
ing fear of them. Somewhere along the coast 
is a rocky seat known as the devil's chair, and 
a strange light was frequently seen here at 
night, to the blood-curdling horror of the 
beholder. 

The same traveller, who was not a High- 
lander, and who had no fear of bogies, one 
night shied a stone, all too well aimed, which 
extinguished the light and raised a frightened 
howl from the bogy, who doubtless thought 
all bogy-land was after her in earnest, for the 
pseudo-bogy was a poor old woman too old 
to work with any sort of satisfaction to her- 
self, and whose son, being a hard man, com- 
17 257 



Down North and Up Along 

pelled her to work for his satisfaction. So 
she found it convenient to become bedridden, 
thus shifting the responsibiUty of work to 
younger shoulders, and was only able to walk 
at night, when undetected she would steal 
forth and seat herself in the devil's chair for 
the comfort of a pipe. Her discoverer prom- 
ised not to betray her, gave her a new pipe 
and a supply of tobacco, and it is to be hoped 
her hard son will never read these lines, at 
least not until the poor old soul has gone 
where she cannot be called forth to work at 
the bidding of any man. 

We floundered slowly along through the 
Melancholy Way of the Alders, cheering each 
other with ghost stories, and about noon came 
out of it, and crossed the bridge over Black 
Brook ; of all the streams we had seen the most 
forbidding, fascinating, and rock-bound. It was 
far, far below us and made its way between mas- 
sive and broken walls of rock. Trees closely 
bordered the rocks above and clung in the 
crevices, overleaning and shadowing the chasm 
below. Altogether, it was a sinister-looking 
brook and as black as night. 

But we had a sudden inner vision of trout 
258 



The Half Way House 

in its pools ! Close to the pools at one side 
lay a flat table of rock, where one could stand 
or sit at ease, if once it could be reached. The 
sun shone brightly, and it was the wrong time 
of day for trout, as well as being too late in the 
season, yet there was an irresistible fascination 
in those black pools. If the trout were not 
there, where were they .? 

By clinging to the roots of trees and pro- 
ceeding with caution, we were able to scale 
the rocks and reach the flat rock by the pools. 
We congratulated ourselves upon the posses- 
sion of worms, for they certainly were a more 
natural food for fish than " flies " made of all 
sorts of indigestible things, and no doubt Cape 
Breton trout had not been educated up to 
" flies." So we cast a worm, but it had no 
time to enter the water, for even as it touched 
the surface it was caught by a trout and swal- 
lowed, hook and all. With pride unspeakable 
we pulled him in, struggling so that we trembled 
for the rod and line, for we knew not how 
to " land " a fish other than just to pull him 
out of the water with as few preliminaries as 
possible. 

We put him in a damp cavern in the rock 
259 



Down North and Up Along 

behind us, and tried again. The result was 
the same, except that we lost the fish. We 
now knew that the despised " fly " was the 
scientific bait for this variety of trout, and be- 
gan to long for one, a multi-coloured creature 
not born from an egg, made of strong things 
that could not be swallowed nor torn off, and 
in whose care the hook would not come un- 
bailed. In short, down there on the flat rock 
before the trout pools of Black Brook, we 
wished to be delivered from the ignominy of 
angleworms. The truth is, we were fly- 
fishing with worms, and our newborn fisher- 
man's pride rebelled. As fast as we threw, the 
fish jumped at the hook ; they scarcely seemed 
to know whether it was baited or not, and the 
smallest remnant of worm answered as well as 
the plumpest morsel. They were not as large 
as those on the show table in the doctor's tent, 
but they were large enough ; we could not have 
secured them had they been any larger; we 
could not as it was, and lost a great many 
more than we caught. It was very stimulating 
down there surrounded by the great rocks, 
with the black water rushing swiftly down- 
stream, and the still pools lying in the shadow 
260 



The Half Way House 

of the rocks, while at every cast of the line 
the gorgeous dark-skinned trout with their 
flashing jewel-spots leaped at the hook and 
either came fluttering wildly to our hand, or 
to our equal regret and pleasure freed them- 
selves in mid-air and fell flashing back into 
the water. 

It was long before we could tear ourselves 
away from the spot ; then we climbed the diffi- 
cult cliffy, and journeyed on to another deep- 
down brook near which was an open grassy 
space fit to camp in. Dan was given his oats, 
and we took the long rope that had tied the 
bag to the back of the waggon and let our tin 
pail down over the rail of the bridge to the far- 
away stream of sparkling cold water. Such 
water as comes down these brooks, sweet, cold, 
clear, full of sparkle, it seems almost living, 
and seems, too, to give life to him who drinks. 
We took a long, refreshing draught, and then 
prepared our meal of fresh-caught trout, blue- 
berries we had ourselves picked from the 
mountains, and bear's meat. We were agree- 
ably disappointed in this meat ; it was delicate 
in flavour, and when cooked until tender, for it 
was somewhat tough, was as good as any meat. 
261 



Down North and Up Along 

Being tough, it was better stewed than broiled 
and we still think with longing of the bear's 
meat stews we concocted under the fir-trees of 
Cape Breton with the aid of the sparkling 
brook water and the red-skinned potatoes M. 
bought each day from a wayside cottage. 

While we were preparing our Black Brook 
trout, along came a Highlander leading a cow, 
and he stopped, full of curiosity. We showed 
him our fish and he said they did very well, 
that Black Brook was the place for trout, but 
that he had caught one measuring twenty-two 
inches. Then he took the rod and handled it 
curiously, particularly the reel. " This," he 
said, tapping it, " I suppose will be a reel. I 
have lived a good many years, but I never saw 
one and never expected to;" and he unwound 
the line and wound it up again. All this 
time the cow was tossing her head and trying 
to pull away, but he clung to the rope and 
the rod, from time to time requesting the cow 
to " sh ! " At length he and the cow went 
on their way, no doubt with much food for 
meditation. 

It was as usual nearing the twilight hour 
when we drew near our destination. Breaking 
262 




H 



o 
o 



The Half Way House 

through the woods at last, we came upon the 
Half Way House standing on an open high 
place. 

The Half Way House is just what such a 
refuge should be, warm, clean, and hospitable. 
The door opens into a large kitchen with a 
generous stove on one side and a floor that 
shines from much scrubbing. The McPher- 
sons keep the place and have for many a year, 
though Mrs. McPherson is still bonnie and 
charming. 

Mr. McPherson was away at the time of our 
visit, on his yearly trip to Halifax, to lay in 
provisions for the winter, of which forethought 
there is certainly need. 

Besides Mrs. McPherson, a tall Highlander 
who looked after Dan's comfort, and a young 
woman who helped about the house, we were 
the only beings in that distant and lonely spot, 
excepting a white dog with a black head and a 
tortoise-shell cat with a tortoise-shell kitten, 
which she constantly licked and which afflicted 
her motherly heart by frequently flying oflf to 
an enclosure where the cows came at night, and 
racing around the top rail out of reach of the 
maternal tongue. 

263 



Down North and Up Along 

The Half Way House stands on the cleared 
brow of a high hill with somewhat sombre 
though rather pleasing views of denuded high- 
lands and interminable reaches of spruce, fir, and 
hemlock on three sides ; while the fourth side, 
toward which the house faces, overlooks the sea, 
whose surf is heard pounding against the rocks 
a mile away. Down there on the rocks by the 
sea can also be seen one corner of Neils Har- 
bour. For here, in the loneliest and most 
dangerous part of that lonely and dangerous 
coast, lies the little settlement of English 
people who were the peculiar care of their 
devoted friend, Parson Gibbons. For these 
people came from Newfoundland, and are not, 
like most of the settlers of Cape Breton, High- 
land Scotch. 

We found the air of this northern coast 
splendidly exhilarating. Although it was now 
well along in September and the air was spark- 
ling with cold, particularly in the early morning, 
we never felt chilly. Its effect was to make 
the blood flow faster, and there was none of the 
sense of chill and depression one so often feels 
after driving for several hours in the same 
temperature in southern New England. The 
264 



The Half Way House 

air of " Cape North " is alone worth going 
there for. 

Mrs. McPherson cooked eggs and salt fish 
and potatoes for our supper and spread the 
table in the sunny little sitting-room that 
opened out of the kitchen and whose floor was 
carpeted with many rugs of agreeable design. 
We persuaded her to join us, and added blue- 
berries, apples, and coffee from our stores. 

Mrs. McPherson gave us our first lesson in 
Gaelic, and from her we learned to say " good- 
night " and to ask for bread, milk, potatoes, and 
oats in that unmusical tongue. 

She also initiated us into the mysteries of rug- 
making, and told us how dogwood bark makes 
a gray colouring ; " crackle," which is, as far as 
we could make out, a kind of moss, yields 
brown ; while hemlock also makes a pretty 
shade of brown ; and a weed which we could 
not make out at all from her description yields 
a yellow dye. We were glad to know these 
things, and to examine the charming rugs on 
the floor, made from old rags dyed so pleas- 
antly by the juices of the grim forest, and to 
learn the individual history of each one. 

In the evening came a crowd of berry-pickers 
265 



Down North and Up Along 

with full buckets. They were young men and 
girls who had been out on the mountains to 
the blueberry barrens which are famous about 
here. It seemed to be a sort of annual picnic 
which lasted two or three days, they coming at 
sunset to the Half Way House and at sunrise 
going forth to the mountains. 

They took supper at a long table in the 
kitchen, and we were sorry to see they did 
not fare as well as we, for they had only the 
never-failing tea and toast, rather an insufficient 
meal, one should think, after a long day on the 
mountains. But the bread at the Half Way 
House is at least not sour, and tea and toast is 
the fare to which they are accustomed, and 
which they would have had in their own homes 
no matter how hard the labour of the day. 

The berry-pickers talked Gaelic at table, 
and after tea the girls kept silent or whispered 
to one another, while the men smoked their 
pipes and talked to one another — always in 
Gaelic. As they sat ranged along the sides of 
the kitchen on benches and chairs, they strongly 
recalled the poor whites or " Crackers " of the 
far South. They had the same starved-looking 
bodies, and no doubt opposite severities of 
266 



The Half Way House 

climate and the same lack of proper nourish- 
ment had produced the same result. They 
went to bed in the attic, where the men slept 
on the floor, but the girls stowed themselves 
in a small room wherein was a wide bed. 

Early in the morning we were wakened by 
the berry-pickers getting up. We wished we 
could understand their speech and know what 
it was they talked to one another about. What 
is there to talk about, we should like to know, 
where there is no daily paper, no fashions, no 
new books, nor opera ? How can they even 
get material enough to make gossip about 
their neighbours ? 

The road to Neils Harbour is stony and 
downhill and there is not much to be seen 
from it. One of Cape North's never-failing 
brooks breaks through the mountains and 
tumbles into the harbour along the course of 
the road, though it is for the most part con- 
cealed by intervening vegetation. The harbour 
is but a little cove jutting into the land and 
making a summer haven for the fishing-fleet, 
but in winter it is packed full of ice, as is every 
cranny of this northern coast. It was over the 
ice of this harbour and around the ice of the 
267 



Down North and Up Along 

cruel shore from Insfonish to the harbour that 
Parson Gibbons crept on hands and knees when 
the road was totally impassable, one memorable 
Christmas day of long ago, and all to bring the 
cheer of his presence to the fisher-folk of 
Neils Harbour. Perhaps he feared that unless 
the Christmas-tide could light up the world 
for them a little, they would not have cour- 
age to live through the winter, and one won- 
ders how they do manage it. It is so remote 
and forbidding in summer that one shudders 
to imagine what it must be through the long 
icy winter. 

Yet it is, perhaps, the most picturesque 
settlement on the whole coast. There is a 
narrow space of lowland near the water, with a 
hill rising sharply behind it. 

A point of land ending in a bluff on the sea- 
side holds back the waves and forms a cove 
suited to the needs of the fishing-boats ; and 
around the shore of this cove is a picturesque 
jumble of low fish-huts, flakes, boats in all 
stages of decomposition as well as those in full 
vigour of usefulness, tar, chains, evidences of 
fish everywhere. The high grass-grown bluff 
that abuts out into the water beyond all this, is 
268 



The Half Way House 

covered as well by many rows of flakes, and from 
it a fine view of the wild coast is obtainable. 

The dwelling-houses of Neils Harbour were 
miserable shanties, many of them more like 
temporary shelters than permanent homes. 
Most of them stood on the hillside, and the 
upper ones were reached by a path through the 
dooryards of those lower down. Poor and 
mean as they were outside, they were yet worse 
inside. The rooms were painfully bare, even 
the hitherto never-failing rugs being absent in 
most of them. Compared to them, the simple 
cottages of the Highlanders seemed abodes of 
luxury. The people are so desperately poor 
because there is no farming land at all, and 
there is no work obtainable but the very un- 
certain labour of fishing in the sea. They get 
very little for the fish they catch, not even as 
much as they are worth, we were told ; for 
here, as elsewhere in remote country places, 
the wealth of the people flows into the coffers 
of the local storekeeper. He sets his own 
price on what they bring him and too fre- 
quently pays in merchandise of his own im- 
portation, so that often the poor fisher-folk 
receive no money at all for their labour. 
269 



Down North and Up Along 

The "wood for firing" in this bleak camp 
is brought from the mountains on sledges 
drawn by dogs. 

It was a lowering day, with clouds settling 
and a cold wind blowing, when we visited Neils 
Harbour, and no doubt this is its characteristic 
and predominating aspect. 

The coast is frightful to look upon, with its 
breastwork of sea-worn rock. We had not 
known how cruel a rock-bound coast could be 
until we saw those sinister and threatening 
forms. A vessel forced near shore by stress 
of weather would be broken like a toy. Al- 
most within hand-reach of the land men's lives 
have been dashed out and no aid possible. 

On this wild and sullen coast, on a great 
rock looking over the leaden sea to the north, 
we suddenly came upon Mr. Gibbons's little 
brown church standing there, an invitation and 
a promise. Following the track that went past 
the church, the road came down so close to 
the frightful rocks that we were almost upon 
them. 

Beyond Neils Harbour there is an almost 
impassable road to New Haven farther along 
the coast. We did not attempt to go there, as 
270 



T'he Half Way House 

we could see the place from where we were, — 
a few houses scattered on the shore that sug- 
gested anything but a haven. 

It must be a cold and dangerous port for 
the poor mariners of life who have found their 
way there. Its pitiful old name of Hungry 
Cove no doubt better expresses the facts of 
life there than the better-sounding New 
Haven. 

But the people here, in spite of their fright- 
ful poverty, have a frank and pleasant manner 
very different from the impenetrable and silent 
demeanour of the Scotch. We met a little boy 
and girl gathering bits of wood by the roadside, 
pretty, fragile creatures ; and when we spoke to 
them they answered promptly and intelligently, 
and with a pretty eagerness to tell us what we 
wanted to know. 

We spoke to the people we met, and it was 
pathetic as well as beautiful to see the worn 
faces lighten at the messages we bore from 
their beloved pastor. 

One woman, upon hearing we had recently 

seen Mr. Gibbons, came running from her 

house with the tears raining down her face, 

blessing him at every step and begging us to 

271 



Down North and Up Along 

tell him that her husband had finally become 
totally blind. She was not begging for sym- 
pathy nor asking for alms. All she wanted 
was to speak to us and receive a sympathetic 
touch of the hand. These people, seeing no 
one, expect nothing but the inexorable working 
out of their lives by such means as lie about 
them. We found that this woman and her 
husband had only what she could earn by the 
labour of her hands, and what that was can be 
imagined when one considers the impossibihty 
of getting a living here even by the hard work 
of men's hands. We astonished her by a gift 
which though small must have seemed to her 
like succour dropped from the skies, and we 
went back to the Half Way House filled with 
a sense of the misery and courage of the people 
of Neils Harbour. We had there seen more 
smiles, more cheerfulness and cordiality, than 
anywhere else in our journey through Cape 
North. 

It is a question of race temperament, and 
the subject is a very wonderful one when one 
stops to consider it. 



272 



XVIII 
ASPY BAY 

THE road to the north of the Half 
Way House continues through the 
wilderness. We found it very rough, 
and there were no views to beguile 
the way other than endless woods of evergreens 
spread over the mountains, dismal swamps, 
and stony hills where ruts were deep and 
pitch holes were many. 

In this wilderness we passed two men in a 
waggon. They drew into the bushes to give 
us way, and we saw in their faces a desire to 
ask us our names, where we came from, and 
where we were going, so we stopped and an- 
swered. One of the men then forced upon 
our acceptance three or four small and very 
hard apples of which he was proud, because 
they came from his own tree. 

In the midst of this frightful wilderness we 
found a French settlement of three or four 
houses. 

Why it was there among dead trees, let who 
can, answer. The miserable shanties and their 



iS 



273 



Down North and Up Along 

surroundings were squalid and unsightly, with- 
out a touch of picturesqueness. We found a 
woman there, a gaunt woman who talked her 
French ■patois with the vivacity of her race. 
She was the mother of little children, one a 
young babe. It certainly looked as if the 
family would have to subsist upon stones 
during the winter. And yet she talked with 
vivacity. That is what it is to be French. 

These people, we learned later, were descend- 
ants of the Acadians. They themselves did 
not know it, nor how they came to be among 
English-speaking people. They had lost all 
tradition of themselves. They only knew that 
they had just come from islands in the north, 
where life was too hard even for them, be- 
cause there was no wood there. 

As we went on, it looked as though all the 
beauty had been left behind. Ahead of us lay 
a straight blue wall, of which we at times 
caught glimpses. It appeared to cut off the 
way to the north ; it rose up ever and anon 
menacing and mysterious. Did we pass be- 
yond it ? And what then ? What was there 
to be seen in this unpeopled and ever increas- 
ingly dreary wilderness ? 
274 



A spy Bay 

As on the road to the Half Way House, we 
travelled miles without seeing a human habi- 
tation. But finally there came a change. 
Barley fields and patches of oats began to 
appear. Houses stood discreetly back from 
the road with intervening meadow before the 
doors. The flat wall ahead broke up, and we 
now and again caught glimpses of a fairy world 
that astonished and delighted us. Mr. Gib- 
bons had assured us that the farther north we 
went, the finer would be the scenery, but the 
long and dreary way from Ingonish had dimmed 
our hope a little. 

Meadows appeared now at the right and 
now at the left ; there came a gleam of blue 
water and a pretty lake spread out below 
us. Two or three houses stood near the 
lake, but we could discover no track that led 
to them. 

In our turnings there came repeatedly the 
most bewitching glimpses of mountains, loftier 
than those of Ingonish, and about them were 
driving wraiths of mist, that filled the hollows 
and half obscured the projecting masses. 

We crossed streams bordered by cultivated 
fields, and the trees began to look home-like, 
275 



Down North and Up Along 

maples and birches frequently appearing. We 
skirted a valley that once had been a water- 
course ; a torrent had swept down it and left 
behind a plain story of its existence. Out of 
the middle of the valley rose an island, tree- 
covered and with precipitous cliffs of white 
gypsum, worn into queer-shaped towers and 
buttresses. Over our road also loomed ghostly 
and threatening forms of gypsum, under which 
we were half afraid to pass, they looked so 
ready to topple on our heads. And then we 
came fairly upon the charming valley of Aspy 
Bay. It was like joy after sorrow to come 
out of the sombre fir-filled wilderness into this 
blooming valley, through which flowed a broad 
and beautiful river. There were elm-trees 
singly, and in groups, with the sun behind 
them shining out of a misty atmosphere that 
made the trees look half unreal, as though 
they were a product of the light. 

Mountains rose from across the valley in 
beautiful slopes, clad to the summit with trees, 
excepting where here and there a bare flank 
swept up covered only with low, bright-leaved 
shrubs. They were mountains with purple 
shadows in their hollows, their slopes blue and 
276 



A spy Bay 

green, with rainbow colours in the mist-filled 
openings between them, — mountains that rose 
from the level plain, like vast and lovely 
spirits. 

As Smoky excels in magnitude the moun- 
tains of Englishtown, so do the mountains of 
Aspy Bay excel Smoky, yet they are beautiful 
rather than grand. More than one lovely 
slope was painted with prismatic colours, the 
varying shades of red rock being blended with 
exquisite tones of green, yellow, and blue, 
while seaward a warm rose tint, a sweet alpine 
glow, lay along some of the slopes. 

The valley was in a state of high cultivation, 
and hidden behind clumps of trees were the 
scattered farmhouses. Evidently peace and 
plenty reigned here, a lovely oasis in a great 
wilderness. The houses were roomy and well 
built, and everything about them betokened 
prosperity. We stopped on the bridge that 
crossed the river, surprised and pleased, and 
looked and looked again. 

Mountains and valley were before us, while 

off to the right shone the blue bay from which 

the place gets its name. It was as usual toward 

night as we thus drew near our stopping-place, 

277 



Down North and Up Along 

and an Indian summer haze intensified the 
beauty of the waning day. 

As we got closer, the mountains, without 
losing their marvellous colouring, became more 
distinctly individual, those behind being joined 
to those in front only by their long overlap- 
ping slopes and the colour-filled spaces between. 

We were happy thus to find our blue bar- 
rier resolved into endless forms of beauty, 
mountain lying beyond mountain, while here 
and there a glen opened to let out a foaming 
brook and make windows through which we 
caught glimpses of exquisitely lovely moun- 
tain forms beyond. 

We were on our way to Zwicker's, and in 
the estimation of the people of Cape North he 
who does not know Zwicker's does not know 
much. 

" You will know it," the people told us ; " it 
will be the big house." And so we did know 
it when at last we got there. 

It stands near the road in a friendly fashion, 
and is half house, half store, the store occupy- 
ing one wing of the building. 

But inside the house is quite distinct from 
the store, of whose proximity there is no sign. 

278 




m 



u 



A spy Bay 

Zwicker's, or " Zwigger's," as the people call 
it from Baddeck to Bay St. Lawrence, was a 
surprise to us in more ways than one. It was 
kept by two brothers, gentlemen by nature 
and education. There were signs of foreign 
travel and new books and recent issues of the 
" American" magazines were lying about. The 
house was not only roomy and comfortable, 
very neat and well furnished, but afforded 
luxuries not before enjoyed by us in Nova 
Scotia. 

There was an agreeable atmosphere about 
the place, as of people who were accustomed to 
the rational pleasures of life. 

In the dining-room was a telegraphic instru- 
ment whose clickety-cHck reminded us of the 
world to which we belonged and of the mar- 
vels achieved by man in that world. 

What a moment that must have been in 
Aspy Bay when the first transatlantic message 
was received ! When the whole civilised world 
held its breath to hear the momentous word 
that, spoken in one continent, should leap to 
another, vanquishing time and space, and in that 
triumphant hour proclaim the conquest of 
civilisation over barbarism, the death of war, 
279 



Down North and Up Along 

and the birth of universal peace upon earth. 
It takes war a long time to die and universal 
peace a long time to get out of its swaddling 
clothes, but these things will surely come to 
pass. The submarine cable and war cannot 
live together on the same planet. 

We were unexpected guests at Zwicker's ; 
and such an event as our arrival must have 
occasioned the greatest astonishment, if not 
absolute consternation, to the two men whom 
fate, by taking away the mother, had left to 
continue the home as best they could. But we 
were received with such courtesy, and enter- 
tained with such skilful hospitality, that we 
did not know, until after we had left, that the 
brothers constituted the whole household. 

The history of Aspy Bay dates as far back 
as that of Englishtown and Ingonish, — at least 
in those days it had a name, the same it bears 
to-day ; and the French voyager Pinchon speaks 
also of this place, for he did not stop his trav- 
els until he had gone the whole length of the 
coast. 

" Leaving Niganiche, we came to the creek 
of Owarachouque," — which creek was that, we 
should like to know, the creek at Neils Har- 
280 



Aspy Bay 

hour or our Black Brook perchance ? — " and 
from thence successively to the harbour of 
Aspe, Cape North, the creek of St. Lawrence, 
and the cape of the same name. Cape North, 
or the mountain which forms it, is a peninsula 
joining to the island of Cape Breton by a very 
low neck of land. But none of these places 
are inhabited, or hardly at all frequented." 

So much for " Aspe " prior to 1760 ; and in 
truth it is not very densely inhabited yet, nor 
is it frequented to the extent its lagoons run- 
ning into the land from the sea and its soulful 
mountains deserve. 

In the early part of the century the evicted 
Scotch peasants seeking homes found the 
lovely and fertile valley, and the flourishing 
appearance of the settlement is testimonial 
enough to the character of the land, for where 
the land is good the people are always well- 
to-do and happy, if other people who do not 
draw the furrow or wield the sickle will let 
them alone. 

There is a delightful lounging-place on the 

water's edge a field or two from Zwicker's, a 

warm grassy bluff where one can lie in the 

sunshine with the same rat-tatting grasshoppers 

281 



Down North and Up Along 

scurrying about in the same panic-stricken 
haste that gave us such bootless chase on 
Beaman's Mountain, and watch the changing 
light on the mountains or on the blue bay. 

Over the bay, among the little islands, boats 
with brown sails were gliding about, for the 
people here dye, or, as they say, tan, their sails 
to make them last longer, and these brown- 
sailed boats add much to the charm of the 
picture. 

Aspy Bay, like the Bay of St. Anne, is almost 
shut up by a long cobblestone bar ; and a reef 
of cobblestones at our le'ft, as we sat facing the 
sea, was thickly grown with the Mertensia Mari- 
tima, now in full bloom. It was a comfort to 
see this and know that we had not really been 
guilty of pulling up the very last one in "Cape 
North " when we so shamefully exterminated 
the pretty thing on Englishtown's pebbly bar. 

How long the Mertensia Maritima will be 
left to adorn the cobblestone bar of Aspy Bay 
is a question, for the Newfoundland steamer 
calls here, and it is easy to step aboard at Halifax 
and come straight to this beautiful and health- 
ful spot, sure of a safe landing and a courteous 
reception away down north. And some day 



A spy Bay 

the work-weary and nature-hungry souls from 
the cities are going to find out these things ; 
and then, Mertensia Maritima, you may say 
good-bye to your cobblestone bar. For these 
new-comers will love you, and will pull you up 
by the roots, and in a little while will throw 
you away, and that will be the end of you. 

We left Zwicker's and faced again " down 
north," but this was the end, — one more day 
of delightful lingering along the wayside, enjoy- 
ing sea and mountain, coming upon new and 
unexpected beauties of land and sea, and all 
would be known. There would be no more 
mystery, no more wondering " what next," for 
we should come to Bay St. Lawrence and that 
was the end. 

For some distance beyond Zwicker's the 
mountains are on one side of the road and the 
sea on the other; and when there is no wind 
the mountains can be seen inverted on the 
water, where they are almost more lovely than 
standing in the air. 

We passed close to Sugar Loaf, the high- 
est mountain of all, and were tempted. The 
top looked so near and so inviting ! But we 
knew that it was not near and that we could 
283 



Down North and Up Along 

not get to it without first getting badly lost, 
for these mountains of beauty are very stern 
realities when one attempts to ascend them, and 
guides are necessary. 

It is a short stage to Bay St. Lawrence, and 
we did not start very early nor yet hurry on 
the road. 

From Baddeck to Zwicker's is a distance of 
one hundred and one miles by the road, we 
were pleased to learn. The guide-books make 
the distance much shorter, but the guide- 
books are wrong. Any one who has travelled 
the road will know that it is no less than one 
hundred and one miles. 

The distance from Zwicker's to Bay St. Law- 
rence is only from five to eight miles, accord- 
ing to the part of Bay St. Lawrence to which 
one goes. We went eight miles, that is, as far 
as it is possible for mortal man to go in a 
waggon. 

After Sugar Loaf is passed, the road turns 
away from the sea and passes in back of the 
mountains. As soon as one gets behind the 
mountains, the scenery is dreary and consists of 
stretches of fir and spruce trees broken only by 
rushing streams and an occasional valley, where 
284 



Aspy Bay 

somebody has undertaken the cultivation of 
barley and potatoes. 

The way became so desolate and dreary for 
a space that we began as usual to despair of 
anything beyond. The only birds willing to 
stay in this wilderness were the juncos ; and why 
they should go for ever flitting down north 
toward the icy sea, it is probable none but a 
junco can explain. 

Where there are cone-bearing trees, there will 
be squirrel folk. Where bird-notes are lack- 
ing, the song of the squirrel comes not amiss. 
Indeed, it is pleasant even where there are birds, 
and one hearing it for the first time may well 
be excused for mistaking the varied and ex- 
pressive solo for the song of some member of 
the feathered tribe. It usually begins as if the 
performer had been seized with a violent and 
uncontrollable ague that caused his teeth to 
chatter fast and furious. Chatter, chatter, 
faster, faster, until the sounds run together 
and make a pleasant musical note, the pitch 
of which the performer varies apparently at 
will and to give meaning to his song. He 
sings with such abandon and such long-sus- 
tained effort that he ought to drop panting at 
285 



Down North and Up Along 

your feet when he finishes with a dozen staccato 
barks. But not he. While you are pitying 
his condition, he is coolly dropping scales on 
your head from a fir cone which he is cutting 
up with as much energy as if he had not sung 
a note within the memory of man. He is good 
company in the woods, as he never fails to as- 
sault you with a torrent of squirrel back talk, 
which is a great deal better than no talk, and 
then he will very likely make amends by sing- 
ing to you, though, truth to tell, you never feel 
quite sure whether his remarkable and very 
energetic song would bear translating to polite 
ears. 

Our fears for what was to come as v/e moved 
over the last stage of our journey turned out 
as they always did. The dreary behind-the- 
mountain road suddenly brought us into a new 
world; and as had happened each time before, 
as soon as the view burst upon us, we were 
tempted to exclaim, " This, then, is better than 
all the rest." 



286 



XIX 
CAPE NORTH 

BAY ST. LAWRENCE is different 
from all the rest. It is the Ultima 
Thule, the end of everything, the 
place where the land comes to a sud- 
den stop as though saying to the sea, " You have 
conquered, I can push against you no farther ; 
but see what a battlement I have reared to 
defy you and keep you back from my rocky 
vitals." 

When one gets to Bay St. Lawrence he can 
no longer pursue his devious, half-fearful, but 
wholly fascinating course " down north," for 
as he stands on the high bluff and looks over 
the pitiless northern sea, he knows that at last 
he is " down north," that the half-dreaded 
mountains and swamps have been passed, that 
for days and days he has been a tramp, a gypsy, 
eating by the roadside and drinking from way- 
side streams, begging hospitality — to be well 
paid for — from the people along the road and 
revelling as he always dreamed of, but never 
287 



Down North and Up Along 

expected to revel, in the free outdoor life of 
an untamed and beautiful land. 

One can have all the delights and discom- 
forts of pioneer life in Cape North with none 
of its dangers. 

Bay St. Lawrence is scooped out of the stony 
land between stone mountains that guard it to 
east and west. But the settlement near the 
shore is also called Bay St. Lawrence and is 
surrounded on three sides by the mountains 
and on the fourth by the sea. It is on a 
plateau of exquisitely rolling swells, for the 
most part grown over by soft tawny-white 
grass and spacious enough to give the effect 
of downs. It is a clean grassy amphitheatre 
shut from the world by mountains and sea. 

Close against the mountains that shut it 
from the eastern sea is McDougal's Cove, 
where are only three or four houses all sur- 
rounded by broad meadows, through which we 
could find no road but only waggon tracks 
going in all directions as if intending to lead 
the stranger astray and land him on the bank 
of the bridgeless brook that gurgles through 
these puzzling meadows. 

In approaching McDougal's Cove we 
288 



Cape North 

crossed a gully in the land, a deep cut, along 
the bottom of which flowed a tiny brook, at 
one time no doubt quite a masterful torrent ; 
but its days of rampage were over, — it had 
waxed old, thin, and feeble, and the deep hole 
it had cut now formed the cosey hiding-place 
for two or three blacked-roofed fish-houses and 
a few fishing-boats. So deep was this gully 
that the buildings were entirely hidden until 
we stood fairly over their heads and looked 
down upon them. 

Mr. and Mrs. Donald McDonald and their 
sons and daughters live in their tiny home near 
the bluff overlooking the northern sea and 
overshadowed by the great rock that rises a 
thousand feet from the water, and is twin to the 
bluff that is the veritable Cape North, and 
which stands to the eastward of this. 

It is certainly a mortifying statement to have 
to make, but we are not sure that we really saw 
Cape North, after all. There was an impene- 
trable haziness about the people's ideas as to 
just exactly which bluff it was that distressed 
us and confused our understanding. It is 
probable, however, that, having gone to Bay 
St. Lawrence to see Cape North, we did not see 
19 289 



Down North and Up Along 



it. We now think it lay concealed behind the 
splendid headland that came up out of the sea 
at McDougal's Cove, and which no doubt is 
every whit as good as Cape North. Still — ! 
It was a noble bluff that we saw, and it vividly 
recalled Smoky's red front, though this mass 
rises almost perpendicularly. It is followed 
inland by another and similar uprising of red 
rock, and that by another, and so on and on, 
all of them sending great buttresses out toward 
the grassy plains and finally framing in the 
splendid amphitheatre of rolling meadow-land. 

The mountains surrounding Bay St. Law- 
rence are of bare rock. The fir-trees, the 
spruces and hemlocks, discreetly remain at their 
bases making a dark-green border to their 
bright-coloured walls. There is great beauty 
in the grim slopes of bare red rock ; the colour 
of them is amazing ; lichens and bushes, or it 
may be only the reflection of the afternoon 
light at different angles from the scarred sur- 
face, have made them beautiful beyond telling. 

There is a sense of space, of peace, and 

almost of awe in the presence of these strong 

slopes with the wide grassy plain at their base, 

and the feeling of vastness and isolation is in- 

290 



Cape North 

creased by the height of the plain above the 
shoreless sea that spreads before mountains and 
meadows. 

The great bluff at McDougal's Cove rises 
from the sea in a solid wall around which one 
must pass in a boat to the outer bluff which is 
indeed Cape North. There is a path over the 
back of the mountain, however, a rough path 
to climb, through coniferous trees where on 
the sheltered side they flourish, and over bare 
stones where the trees fail. 

Katie McDonald, blooming daughter of our 
new-made friends, was to go over the mountain 
the very afternoon of our arrival. For on the 
other side, accessible only by boat and this 
rude mountain path, is a cove where has been 
built a lobster factory. The factory is owned 
by the son of a certain Rory McLeod, krhown 
to fame as Big Rory because of his uncommon 
height. Money Point is over there by the 
lobster factory ; and it is Money Point because 
once — a long time ago — a specie ship was 
wrecked, and the coin fell into the water, where 
for many a year it was fished out or thrown up 
by storms and came into the hands of eager 
seekers. 

291 



Down North and Up Along 

The money of Money Point is still fished 
out of the sea, but not in the form of specie. 
It comes out as lobster to be later transformed 
into money. 

Sometimes lobsters are scarce even here, and 
there are none to can. This happened one 
year when the mountains were red with wild 
strawberries and the canny son of Big Rory did 
then, so we were told, set his people to canning 
strawberries instead of lobsters, and reaped the 
reward he deserved, for these mountain straw- 
berries, the people say, are very large and juicy 
and wonderfully flavoured. 

We were told, too, that on the back side of 
one of the mountains red currants grow wild 
and in great profusion ; but this marvel we did 
not see with our own eyes, though we saw a 
great many strawberry vines and some of them 
foolishly in bloom. 

Katie McDonald was going over to cook for 
her brothers, who were canning lobsters, and 
she did not seem to regard the excursion as 
particularly pleasant ; but when the time came 
she started bravely enough, and we watched 
her until she disappeared on the lonely moun- 
tain, as though swallowed up by it. 
292 



Cape North 

We should have liked to go with Katie, but 
there were reasons against it, and we contented 
ourselves with climbing a bare spur to the top 
of another mountain, hoping for a view of the 
whole earth. As is always the case, it was far- 
ther to the top than it seemed, and it was a 
very steep slope upon which huge cliffs and 
crags jutted out, not pleasant to surmount, and 
perhaps not always quite safe. And at the top 
— nothing ! He who climbs these mountains for 
a view of the world will find himself on the edge 
of a mile-wide plateau which is rough and hubbly, 
and across which one cannot possibly see farther 
than a few rods. So, after all, it does not pay 
very well, for the view down into McDougal's 
Cove from the mountain-top is not as good as 
the view from the cove up the mountain, and 
the latter can be had without any exertion. 

In the McDonald home were a number of 
sealskins, the seals being caught near here. 
They are not the fur-bearing seal, but are 
covered with a coarse light-coloured hair, so 
their only value is in their leather. We did 
not see any seals, but Charlevoix did, and in his 
letters he tells certain things about them which 
we may believe or not as we please : — 
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Down North and Up Along 

" The Sea Wolf, or the Seal," says he, " takes its 
Name from its Cry, which is a Sort of howling ; for 
in its shape it resembles not the Wolf, nor any land 
animal that we know. Lescarhot asserts that he has 
heard some cry like Screech-Owls ; but these might 
be only young ones, whose Cry was not quite formed. 
They make no Hesitation here. Madam, to place it in 
the Rank of Fishes ; though it is not mute, though it 
is brought forth on the Land, and lives as much on it 
as in the Water, and is covered with Hair : In a 
word, though it wants nothing to make it to be con- 
sidered as an amphibious creature. The war they 
make with the Seals, though it is often on Land, and 
with the Gun, is called a Fishery. 

*' The Head of a Seal is something like a Bull-Dog's: 
He has four Legs, very short, especially those behind : 
In every other Respect it is a Fish. It drags itself 
rather than walks upon its Feet. Its Legs before 
have Nails, those behind are like Fins ; His Skin is 
hard, and covered with short Hair of divers Colours. 
There are some Seals all white, and they are all so 
when young ; but some, as they grow up, become 
black, others tawny ; many are all these Colours 
mixed together." 

The skins of these creatures were tanned 
with the bark of the spruce-tree and used for 
boots and all other articles made of leather. 

294 



Cape North 

Their flesh was eaten, and their oil used in 
cooking and for lighting. We are told that as 
many as eight hundred young ones were some- 
times killed in one day, so probably one 
would wait as long to see a live seal in these 
waters as to see a moose in the mountains back 
of Ingonish. 

At the McDonalds' we were enlightened 
concerning certain pieces of furniture which 
occasionally were found in the fisher-folk's 
houses, — furniture out of all keeping with the 
simple cottage fittings, furniture that belonged 
rather to the cities or the country-houses of 
the well-to-do. But here we learned that 
these articles were the flotsam and jetsam from 
the many vessels wrecked on that cruel coast, 
and it was hinted that time was when certain 
of the settlers busied themselves more in be- 
coming possessed of the spoil than in assist- 
ing the drowning. 

To leave Bay St. Lawrence was to turn 
southward and retrace our steps over moun- 
tains and swamps. Reluctantly we turned 
from the cold northern sea and the fine amphi- 
theatre with its encircling mountains of bare 
rock that were so wonderfully beautiful in the 
295 



Down North and Up Along 

evening glow. Reluctantly we bade adieu to 
the McDonalds', and their cordial hospitality 
that rang more like English than Scotch metal. 
Yet the return proved about as enjoyable as 
the first passing. True, the uncertainty as to 
what next was gone ; we knew what next, 
but that had its advantages. It was pleasant 
to meet again the people and to be received 
now like old friends. It was pleasant to carry 
the bits of neighbourhood gossip from station 
to station — like troubadours of old. And 
the scenery we found was quite new. For 
we were turned around now and looking the 
other way. It is impossible, moreover, to see 
everything in once passing, so that the return 
trip was fully as enjoyable as the first coming. 

We did not linger going back. We did 
not dare, for there was a threat of rain which 
was not to be ignored, unless we desired to 
add to our other experiences that of a typical 
Cape Breton autumn storm. And that of all 
things we did not desire, for there were few 
places we should have cared to remain in, 
storm-bound, even for a day. So we pressed 
ahead, past Zwicker's and past Aspy Bay, 
lovely in the hazy atmosphere. Nor did we 
296 







'^"^'--'^^i-rl 



A Fishing Schooner 



Cape North 

stop until we had reached the hospitable roof 
of the Half Way House, where we found all 
as we had left it, excepting that the maternal 
cat, having been deprived of her kitten, which 
a passing Highlander had begged to take with 
him, persisted in washing the face of the white 
dog with a black head. As to the dog him- 
self, perhaps the least said the better. He 
was bearing it as well as he could, but the 
looks he cast upon the mistaken cat we 
feared did not augur well for her future 
happiness. 

After a good night's rest at the Half Way- 
House, we were off in the cold morning, leav- 
ing Mrs. McPherson with reluctance, and she, 
too, seemed loath to have us go. It seemed 
as if we had known the people of " Cape 
North " a very long time and were parting 
from old friends for ever. Before the bushes 
svv'allowed us up, we turned for a last look, 
and on the doorstep sat the abused dog, 
wondering, no doubt, how long he could 
stand it, while the cat, regardless of conse- 
quences, continued to wash his already too 
clean countenance. 

Sometimes we stopped at our old camp- 
297 



Down North and Up Along 

fires, where they were in particularly favour- 
able spots, and sometimes we found new 
places for the noonday rest. 

The people in the barley fields nodded to 
us and sometimes even smiled. They had 
had time to talk us over and compare notes, 
and though we might be a little "lacking" to 
go on such a purposeless journey, still they 
felt in their hearts that we were harmless. 

We passed the Ingonishes without stopping 
until we had crossed the ferry at the foot of 
Smoky. We did it to save time, for often the 
men are away in the morning on the more im- 
portant business of fishing, and the traveller is 
obliged to await their return. It was just at 
nightfall when we crossed the ferry trusting to 
our oft-tried and never-failing powers of per- 
suasion to get taken in at some wayside cottage 
on the other side. This time we came near 
making a fatal mistake, for the cottages at the 
foot of Smoky would none of us. They 
were few and far between, and it is true 
were tiny, and no doubt it was true, as they 
said, that there was no room for us. At last 
we cast anchor in one in which we knew was a 
spare room and where was a small barn. They 
298 



Cape North 

said they could n't ; we said they must. They 
said it was impossible, and we pictured in 
graphic terms the alternative, our being obliged 
to spend the cold night on the mountain- 
side, where they would go out next day and 
find our frozen forms, and be obliged to bury 
us then and there, and be pointed to by all 
posterity as the cruel folk who had turned 
travellers from their door, to perish on the 
mountain. They saw the reasonableness of 
the argument, and we stayed, though it is not 
quite fair to say they allowed it, suffered it 
would be better ; at least until all hands were 
well warmed up over the kitchen stove, and 
a supper of oatmeal porridge had lent a more 
genial glow to all our heart-strings. Then we 
fell into friendly conversation, and the woman 
showed us her rugs, and the man told us 
of the awful night when he rescued Parson 
Gibbons from sure death on the side of 
Smoky. 

Many of these people are endowed with 
" second sight," and all believe in it. The 
story the man told was this : One night, 
bitter cold and snowing, he had a sudden 
knowledge that Parson Gibbons was on the 
299 



Down North and Up Along 

mountain and in trouble. He prepared to go 
out and his wife said it was folly, for the parson 
was not expected to pass at that time of the 
month. But such terror now seized the man 
that he was compelled to go ; and stumbling 
through the snow he at last found the object of 
his search, who, overcome by the cold, had sunk 
down and ceased to exert himself. If he had 
not been found in this strange way, he would 
surely have perished that night. 

At Wreck Cove we opened three large gates 
and crossed three broad meadows in order to 
make our call upon Big Rory's folks. Big 
Rory himself was not at home ; but we visited 
with Mrs. Rory, who, we were pleased to find, 
was sister to Mrs. McLeod of Englishtown. 

From Big Rory's to Indian Brook, the way 
was lovely, for the mountains of beauty were 
about us, and we caught occasional glimpses of 
those of Englishtown across the sea. 

The last night we spent at Angus Mc- 
Donald's, who had a large house in the " flat 
lands " not far from Indian Brook. We had 
lingered along the way, visiting with old friends 
and being hailed by new ones, for our fame 
had gone abroad, and every one who was 
300 



Cape North 

related to any one we had met — and who 
is not related in that part of the world ? — 
claimed acquaintance, and it was dark before 
we reached our destination, and we were 
troubled. Just as the case began to look 
serious, we saw a dim form approaching. We 
asked it the way to Angus McDonald's, and 
the man replied that he was Angus McDonald 
himself, and was on the way home, and that 
we had missed the turn and must go back 
a little way. Providential meeting! Gladly 
we retraced our steps, and were soon in the 
warmth of the McDonald hearthstone. 

It rained all night, and in the morning the 
sky was wet and sullen, but we decided to 
press on. Better a wetting than isolation in 
any of these cottages ; so on we went, and 
soon the rain came down as if in a fury at 
having let us escape so long. We crossed the 
iron bridge over the Barasois River and did 
not turn to the left toward Torquil McLane's 
ferry, for the waves ran high in Englishtown 
Harbour and there would be no crossing there 
that day. So we turned to the right and went 
" North River way," which is longer but not 
complicated by ferries. 

301 



Down North and Up Along 

We thought we had seen brooks before, but 
that day's drive convinced us that we had until 
then known nothing about the subject. Then, 
too, was explained the use of the many appar- 
ently useless bridges ; under every one poured a 
torrent, — indeed, the road itself was often a 
mountain torrent up which or down which Dan 
waded, keeping to the road by some instinct 
which we had not. There came a place where 
we were surrounded by water, and where there 
was a pond at one side, we knew not how deep. 
The road took a turn along the edge of the 
pond ; but what turn, which way should we go 
to keep on terra Jirina beneath the rushing 
flood } We were in despair, and finally told 
Dan to go his own way, which he did, and took 
us safely through. 

Down the mountain sides rushed foaming 
streams that plunged straight across the road ; 
every mountain was streaked with white lines 
of foam and dashing water. The world had 
gone brook-mad. Sometimes the rain fell so 
heavily as to obscure everything but the 
watery way in front ; then it ceased, and we 
looked out upon the earth soaked and fresh, 
and covered with brooks. 
302 



Cape North 

We were soon soaked to the skin, but in spite 
of that we were thrilled and warmed by the 
beauty of the rain-clad mountains. There, 
wonderful to relate ! did the crisp moss on the 
trees in a moment fluff out into soft masses 
of delicious green ; did the stringy beards on 
the limbs of the spruces expand and become 
light and graceful, and able to sway in beautiful 
curves ; did the grim woods turn into fairy 
palaces with deep soft carpets of lovely moss 
and exquisite tapestry on every tree and rock. 

The road was new and lovely and in the 
sunshine must be a wonder-land of splendid 
mountain scenery, judging from the occasional 
glimpses we caught through the mists. 

Our dinner that day consisted of crackers 
and cheese and apples, which we sat in the 
waggon and ate, while Dan munched his oats 
as best he could standing in his tracks in the 
road. 

It was a wild storm, and the road seemed 
endless. We struggled along from early 
morning until almost nightfall, finally entering 
Baddeck chilled to the marrow and thoroughly 
miserable, while Dan seemed hardly able to take 
another step. 

303 



Down North and Up Along 

A few hours later, sitting coseyly before a 
glowing fire, dry and warm, with that delicious 
drowsiness that comes under such circum- 
stances, the pictures of our trip " down north " 
kept flitting before our minds ; and the dearest 
picture of all was of the mossy rain-drenched 
forest road with the newborn brooks tumbling 
across our path. The wetting did us no 
harm, and the day in the rain was a fitting 
ending to our strange and delightful journey 
"down north." 



304 



